Hello From Cambodia!

 There is so many things I would like to write about our adventures so far in Cambodia.  I will try not to bore you and just include the important bits, bowever, the country is so diverse and amazing that all of it is important (according to me of course!) 

We started our Cambodia trip in Siem Reap the sight of Angkor Wat.  If you don't know what Angkor Wat is I will not explain it here, google it and educate yourself.  Angkor wat is absolutely indescribable, the sheer vastness of it leaves you breathless as you explore a whole lost village from the past.  We spent 2 days exploring the temples getting up at 5 am on the first day to catch sunrise, a very awe inspiring moment. 

Let me quicly take the time to point out a bit about Cambodia.  After the Khmer Rouge took over in the late 1970's (again google and educate yourself) the country was left in extreme poverty.  THis leaves many people begging on the street.  At the temples of Angkor wat you will literally have kids approaching you at all times trying to sell you stuff.  The amazing thing about these kids is they do their job very well.  First they would ask where I was from.  When I said Canada, they would reply "capital Ottawa, population 32 million".  Amazing, and they literally new this for every country.  Also they new the basics of every language.  I they were trying to sell to a german or Japanese person they would speak that language perfectly to make thier sales pitch, unreal!  However, with the poverty you have people literally living in the bushes and on the streets.  We were eating supper one day when a little boy approached our table as we finished.  He pointed to our leftover food and we realised he wanted to take it.  We said ok. and he quickly produced plastic bags and poured all our leftovers into them, heartbreaking.  After we got over our shock we realised we should have bought him supper , but we didn't even think.

After Siem Reap we took a boat trip to another town called Battanbang.  The boat trip was 6 hours down a river past various "floating villages"  The villages are literally built on the water and as you pass all the kids runout to wave to you as though you are celebrities, it is adorable.  From Battambang we came down to the apital of cambodia Phnom Penh where we are right now.

While here I wanted to do some volunteer work in an orphanage as there are so many throughout the city.  Yesterday I got my moto driver to drop me off at one that sounded good.   showed up there and it turns out the kids were having eye exasmines that day and they were wondering if i wanted to stay and help entertain the kids while they were waiting to get their eyes checked.  I said ok, and told the moto driver to come back in 3 hrs topick me up.  What an amazing afternoon.  The kids were great.  First I read them a book in English (which they seemed to know off by heart).  Then they entertained me with dancesand songs that they learn at school.  they tried to teach me a traditional Cambodian "wrist dance" but I must say I wasn't very good!  THen I taught them how to play Simon Says (language barrier was a bit of an issue but they caught on) and taught them how to do the hokey pokey  In return they taught me how to count to 30 in Khmer, I am actually really good and used my new skills at supper tonight.  The eye docter was from Toronto and she had given all the kids Canada stickers so it was a little surreal to see all these little cambodian kids running around with Canada stickers on.  There were 3 othere Khmer volunteers at the orphanage - 3 girls that wre helping on weekends in addition to going to University.  I talked to them a little about politics and corruption and it seems to be a sad state of affairs.

Today we decided to take some rice to another one of the orphanages that was in dire need.  The rice was only $30 for 50kg which is not a lot to us but will feed them for a while.  The funniest part was fitting me and my driver and a 50kg bag of rice on our little scooter, ha!  The orphanage was very appreciative and again the kids were amazing. 

We also went to the S-21 torture museum and the "killing feilds" mass graves from the Khmer Rouge Reign today.  Needless to say it was a bit of a dire morning - horrific.

That is all for now, sorry this things is so long but i have lots to share.

Miss you all,

love

Melissa