First Days in Siem Reap

We arrived in Siem Reap after a nice five hour bus ride, and immediately took three tuk tuk's to the village we will be working with for the remainder of our time in Siem Reap. When we arrived we were met by a horde of children who never leave our sides. We then met all of the musicions of the village in the ""Friendship Hut" which Cambodia travelers helped build two years ago. They played two or three songs for us on tradational Khmer instruments, some of which were made by people in the village. After this we wrapped up and went to dinner at a Khmer place, which was very good. The next day we all went out to breakfast and ate our fill before going back to the village to teach English. A few hours into teaching we learned that a new vollyball net had been put up which gave the English lessons a rather abrupt end. Vollyball was lots of fun and Ryan, Rebecca, Patrick and myself all played. Unfortinuatly for us what the Khmer people lack in height they make up in the ability to spike the vollyball...hard. After we finished the game everyone went back to the hotel to shower and get ready to go out to Angkor Tom, a massive ancient temple complex, where we saw one of the many temples there, which happened to be where the movie Tomb Raider was shot. We moved on from the temple to the smallest of the massive reservoirs built around the 13th century by hand. The size of these reservoirs is absud even by todays standards, some of them are over four miles long! Our tuk tuk drivers then took us to the market where we had dinner at a place called "Temple". After ordering our food Rebecca and I played Ryan and Riege in pool, where we were all impressed by Riege's ability to quit a game of pool with highschool students. The next day was most likely my favorite day so far. It started out with going out to the village to teach English for a few hours while Mrs. Bovard and Mr. Riege discussed many different topics with the adults of the village, including the value of equity in a community. We came back to the hotel for a bit, and then headed out to see the very famous Angkor Wat. Upon arrival via tuk tuk we were immediantly surrounded by a mass of young people selling different trinkets and books. We quickly moved to the other side of the road and walked down part of the causeway across Angkor Wat's massive moat (over two miles long!) Here I made a quick presentation with some interesting facts about Angkor Wat and then we moved on to the temple itself where Patrick shared some information with us about the bas-relief of Angkor Wat, the longest bas-relief in the world. We explored the temple a bit and I ended up next to a very angry monkey, and proceded to get out of the way, very quickly, before I got my face ripped off. When we crossed the road to get back in our Tuk Tuk's we were again surrounded by the mob of people trying to sell us things. We all got in our tuk tuk's while Lauren bargned for a book. Riege decided he wanted to buy some postcards, and the tuk tuk with Ms. Bovard, Riege, Lauren and myself was promptly surrounded by two dozen screaming kids. He bought a few postcards from one young girl, and in the process the kids learned that his name was Steve and yelled "STEVE STEVE BUY THIS" for the next few minutes. He got fed up and yelled "LIFE IS NOT FAIR" One girl who Mr. Riege didn't buy anything from seemed to agree with this and proceded to tell him that he in fact was not a fair man. One of us kids on the tuk tuk agreed with this and told her that he was not only an unfair man but was also a bad man. I won't mention names. She agreed with this, and Mr. Riege told the tuk tuk driver to get him away from here, I think he was scared of the 13 year old Khmer girl. One of the young kids took a liking to "STEVE"and hung onto our tuk tuk to everyone suprise and told Mr. Riege that he was in face a good man, and then jumped off while we were going about 10 miles per hour. Luckly Lauren got a decent ammount of this on video, and if we are lucky it will be posted in the blog at some point. Hopefully some of you will have some comments on this matter, and I would love to know how many people agree with the little Khmer girl. I sure do.

Dan

Our last days in Kampot & Arn's House

On our 11th day, last day in Kampot, we spent the day taking a boat ride. We took the boat down to the ocean, then up through the river to some rapids. Once at the ocean we had the choice to swim or just walk around in the water; it was very warm. We beached the boat on a sand bank in the middle of the ocean, and within a half hour, it was completely covered with water. It took a long time to get back up stream to the rapids, but when we finally got there, it felt good to hop in the water, though it was very rocky. On our way back, we came across three grown naked white men. While I didn't feel the need to look, Riege, of course, took a picture of the three of them, which got quite the laugh among the boat.
The next day, we took a 5 hour car ride to Arn's house. When we got there, some of us went to the market to get food for dinner. It was a very interesting experience. When we got back we set up our beds, the girls got there our big hut with misquito nets, and so did the boys. The boys spot had a great view of the river, and had a nice cool breeze which kept the bugs away. The girls weren't so lucky. They were near a fence were dogs would constantly bark throughout the night. Arn's bathroom was an adventure in itself. Not only did you have to manually pour water into the toilet to make it flush, but there was a blue and red spotted getcho about 6-7 inches long that hung out there.
The next day at Arn's was a very much so "Chill Day". We all hung around reading books and resting. At some point we all sat around and attempted to make friendship braclets with eachother. (I got slightly addicted and have made 3 in the past day) We all got together as a ground and Riege asked us questions again which we were to answer and then share with the group. He asked us questions such as: What have you learned about Cambodia? What have you learned about yourself? What have you learned about communication? And things like that. Going around the group and sharing our answers seemed to make the trip so much more real, expecially when we realized we are more than half way through our trip already.
That night, after dinner, we went into Arn's room and watched some music videos of Sima and a movie that he directed.
Today we took a 6 hour car ride to Siemriep. We stopped to have a picnik lunch where some were brave enough to eat some crickets. We are staying at the "Home Sweet Home" hotel were we will stay for the next 8 days. We will look at lots of temples and visit the market places.

Be back befor you all know it!
Sensierly, Ryan Sitner

Last Days in Kampot

We are thankful for the cool breezes in Kampot. I've attached a couple of photos of Maggie's birthday dinner at Jasmine and one of our trip to Wat Charmcar Bei and one showing some beginning crazy stretching with the Epic Arts kids. We're off to Arn's home on the Mekong tomorrow.

Our Time in Kampot

We returned to the building site early Saturday morning and right away started to help carry lumber for the walls of the house. Unfortunately, we couldn't help with the house as much as we wanted to, because most of the builders were out working at the nearby salt marshes. We all decided to go on a long bike ride around the salt fields. Despite the bumpy terrain, we all enjoyed the scenery and had a lot of fun.
Yesterday morning we got up early and headed for the Kampot Pepper Plant. Our tour guide explained the different types of pepper (black, white, red) and how they are grown. He took us to look at the plants, and then we all had the chance to purchase pepper. After our tour, we headed back to the hotel and got ready to go to Epic Arts. Epic Arts is a school for deaf and disabled kids. The kids told us about their life in Cambodia and about Epic Arts, and in turn we explained American society and our everyday life. What we said was translated into Khmer, and then translated again into Cambodian sign language. Then, all of the kids came up with names for each of us in sign language. During our first day at Epic Arts, we didn't really get a chance to interact directly with the kids because most of the time was taken up with performances.
This morning at 8:00 we returned to Epic Arts and got right into group theater games (taught by Mrs. Bovard) with all of the kids. It was a lot of fun, and a new experience for some of the travelers who aren't into theater and dance. We all gave it a shot, and had a lot of fun working together with the kids. Maggie and I got a chance to show the types of dance we do at home. I did a tap demonstration and Maggie did ballet. For the rest of the day we played different games and got to know each other better. By the end of the day we felt we had made connections at Epic Arts and felt sad to say goodbye.
Tomorrow morning we will visit the building site to see how the house looks upon completion. We are also going on a 26 mile boat ride and will get the chance to go swimming.
Hope all is well at home!
-Lauren

Photos from Kampot

More Photos

The group woke up nice and energetic for a new setting: Kampot! As our jet lag started to ware off, we walked over to a restaurant where we would eat our last breakfast in Phnom Penh. It only catered to foreigners, so the cuisine was very familiar but certainly tasty. The car ride to Kampot was about four hours long. We stopped after only an hour of driving to see the killing fields where the prisoners from Toul Sleng were taken. There was one main temple in the middle of the museum that held over 30,000 skulls. While walking around the morbid fields where so many people were tortured, the student travelers met three kids: two 10 year olds and one 7 year old. They spoke very good English because they learned it in school. We gave each one of them a dollar, and when we asked what they were going to do with the money they said they would buy books for school. All of us agreed that whether or not the money would go toward books, it would be a big help. We finally arrived in Kampot by 2:30. Our first priority after getting settled into the hotel was finding a place to eat. There was another foreigner restaurant just down the street from our hotel. Unlike Phnom Penh, the streets are wider and much less crowded. We were all very excited to learn that for the next week we will be using bicycles as our source of source of transportation. It was a low key first day in Kampot, but the next day would be the opposite. We woke up nice and earlier: 6:30am. After a nourishing breakfast we biked down the street to Epic Arts (an organization like Cambodia Living Arts). Our mission today was to help a family build a house. The oldest lady of the house was 70 years old and could not walk because of her knee. The first task was to demolish the current house they were living in which was falling apart and infested with bugs- that was the easy part. We started to build the new home which is not done yet. In the middle of our six hour work day we took a walk through the village. It was beautiful. There was a perfect view of the tall mountains and palm trees sitting on the ground, making for a great picture. Before we left to take showers (which we were all anxious for) we stopped at a school. We sat at the tables where the kids were sitting and asked them questions. Not surprisingly, they all spoke very good English for their age. Tomorrow we will return to finish building the house. This is the first Watkinson has done housebuilding in Kampot. We hope to continue this for the next years.
-Haleigh MacCloy

First Few Days

Following our extensive plane ride halfway around the world, our exhausted group arrived at our hotel around midnight on Monday. After a good night's sleep we went to a breakfast place, where most of us tried out some Cambodian crepes. After filling ourselves, we went for a brief walking tour around the city (Phnom Penh). After a short rest period, we were back on our feet for our next adventure, and it certainly was one. We got to ride through the streets on siklos. Essentially, you sit in a bucket seat attached to the front of a bike and are pushed through town like this. If we hadn't caught everyone's attention before getting in these siklos, we certainly did after. Regardless, the experience was unforgettable and fun. The siklo tour lead us through the history of one of the more recent happenings in Phnom Penh. A building along with a shanty colony, giving shelter to many people, especially artists were torn down. It was sad to see the conditions these people had to live in, but everyone seemed pretty happy which was fairly reassuring. After a nice dinner, our group was treated to a performance by one of the classes at the Cambodian Living Arts. Their dancing, singing, acting and musical skills were very impressive, but after the performance we were more than ready for our beds. After another sound night's sleep we were back in action. This morning we traveled to the dump, which was a true eye opener in realizing how fortunate we really are. To see people sifting through, and living in raw garbage was a sad sight. After we had enough of the sights and smells of the dump, we donated our shoes to the people living there, and we were off to breakfast. Following breakfast we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This museum was dedicated to the people who had been kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered by Pol Pot and his regime. We got to go into the cells, see some of the instruments used and look at pictures of the victims. It was a very morbid period for all of us, dominated mostly by silence. After our visit, we came back to the hotel for a bit of a rest break. Our next stop was Cambodian Living Arts, where we met back up with Seng Song (a Cambodian who had traveled to America and met with our group in the spring). Maggie put on her tap shoes and showed the eager Seng a bit about tap. We then got to meet one of CLA's more talented musicians, a girl who played an instrument similar to that of the xylophone. She was very nice and spoke English incredibly well. We then did a bit more walking and then got some dinner. Now we are back at the hotel, getting ready for bed. It has been a very busy two days here, but we are all enjoying ourselves and learning a lot. We are excited to continue our adventure when we leave tomorrow for Kampot. Haleigh will be making another post in a few days, so stay tuned!
--Patrick O.

A few photos from Phnom Penh

All is well here. We are off to Kampot tomorrow. Should have our first student post up later today, SE Asia time.

Writing in Khmer

Seng taught us to write our names.

Packed and Ready

We're off tomorrow morning, arriving in Phnom Penh close to midnight on Monday. Student travelers will begin their posts here after we get settled.

This photo is of Seng teaching s to write our names in Khmer.