I arrived in Phnom Penh on Sunday 2nd June and
was immediately impressed by the heat and humidity having just left a South
Australian winter! I was met by Sis Nirath and taken to the PP BEC where I
quickly settled into a regular teaching routine with an early morning,
afternoon and evening session most days (depending on attendance). I also had
several day trips to visit such local attractions as the Toul Sleng S-21 prison
and Choeung Ek Killing field from Pol Pot’s era, the national museum and the
royal palace which were all quite interesting to me.
On the 5th Sis Trudy arrived and Sis Nirath and I
met her at the airport so that she was greeted by familiar faces. After Trudy
arrived the three of us took a boat trip down the Mekong river at night time to
see the lights and experience the cool breeze, which was quite pleasant. A few
days later after some intensive teaching by Sis Trudy; Sis Trudy, Sis Nirath
and I departed for BEC2 in Sihanoukville and were unfortunate to come across
some oppressively hot days in the build up to a number of days of storms, this
made sleeping quite difficult. I was also unfortunate to lose my phone in my
first few hours there (possibly taken from next to me where I was sitting),
after we had kindly been taken to the beach by the local brothers and sisters for
dinner, after our late arrival. Over the next couple of days we swam at
Ochheuteal beach, had a trip to see the beautiful Kbal Chhay waterfall, went to
Otres beach (where I had a hamburger and chips) and finally a visit to the
Snake House restaurant to see the snakes, birds and crocodiles they keep there.
We next moved on to Seim Reap, travelling overnight by the
misleadingly named ‘sleeper’ bus, met Sis Loy’s cousin Sien, who was to be our
taxi driver while there, checked into a hotel and immediately went out to buy
our three day pass for the Angkor Temple Complex. We managed to visit four
temples that first day, but found Angkor Wat to be oppressively hot due to all
the stone radiating the heat. That day was the first and only time I was
sunburnt, which I was surprised but pleased about. Over the next two days we
visited many more temples, but the storms rolled in and we were unfortunately
unable to see the sunset at Phnom Bakheng or the sunrise at Angkor Wat the next
morning, even though we got up early especially to see it. The benefit of the storms
was that things were a bit cooler after that, so we were able to meet this with equanimity. Our trip up to
Phnom Bakheng also included a ride on an elephant, which was a first for both
Sis Nirath and myself and truthfully I did not find it very comfortable. We
were also able to visit a butterfly farm, the floating village on lake Tonle
Sap and managed to squeeze in a visit to Artisans Angkor to see how the local
craftsmen hand make/paint all the statues, carvings, silverwork, silk paintings
etc that they produce in Cambodia. The floating village was only reachable by
boat and since we were getting on so well with the boat driver and his friend
he allowed me to drive the boat on the way back. Unfortunately, due to lack of
experience I managed to run aground in the shallow channel :-p, but this turned
out to be easily fixed as we simply pushed the boat back into the deeper
section and continued on our way.
Our return
to PP was by a very swift van, whose driver had tremendous traffic dodging
skills and we arrived at the BEC in time for dinner. After a sleep in, I was
greeted with the news that I had to prepare a talk for that nights Outreach
session, so I immediately got to work on the topic, interrupted only by a few
games of Badminton, (which in the Cambodian heat is very strenuous exercise)
and a fruitless search for a particular model phone with Bro Vitou to replace
the one I lost. Even though we couldn’t find the phone it was still a lot of
fun to experience the peak hour traffic with its many jams and the flooded main
roads during a downpour. The flooding was causing several motos to conk out and
needing to be pushed, but fortunately Bro Vitou’s is a good one and did not
have any trouble.
My general
impressions of the people here are that that they are very friendly, but in
Siem Reap we had a lot of trouble with people, sometimes small children trying
very hard to sell us something and we found the prices in Siem Reap greatly
inflated compared to the rest of the country. The food has generally been very good, but
there are some things I did not enjoy such as Durian and I refused to eat crickets
when we passed through Kampong Thom! Travel is also very interesting here, but
I was not too surprised having seen the same style in other places, the only
differences in Cambodia are that people travelling on the wrong side of the
road seem to have right of way and while most people have a moto (essentially a
110 cc Honda scooter), there are quite a few people driving around in Lexus
SUVs which cost quite a lot.
Teaching
the Outreach students about spiritual marriage.
Bro Aaron
Comments