As it draws nearer to the day, let´s hear from stroke Henry Macphillamy about his thoughts as the final approaches:

Well, as a crew we have trained long and hard for this moment, and now we’re here, ready and revving to get down to the business end of things. I think that a good performance in the heat on Monday was crucial for us. We knew how well we can row together in training and in time trials. Racing at the world championships on the other hand, with all the pressure and excitement they entail is a whole new ball game entirely.

For me it was my first real race in the four. During every other time trial we have done it has just been us and the clock. A clock is a fixed inanimate object that you can neither touch hear or see. In the heat and repechage you could hear the incoherent screeches of the other Cox’s and the thud of powerful strokes in the lanes adjacent to you. You know that these crews are doing everything they possibly can to mow you down with every stroke they take. You can let their presence intimidate you, or you can use them to enhance your own performance.

For the best part of the last four months, the five of us have worked together as a crew. Our times got progressively faster and faster until we (and others) considered ourselves worthy of representing our country. It hasn’t been easy for any of us, and in not just in terms of training sessions! As we head in to the last few days and training rows before our final race here, I think back to all the work which we have done to get to this point.

Not only the work we have put in as a crew, but also those who have supported and encouraged us. If someone had told me that I would be in the a final at the rowing world championships this time last year, I probably would have laughed at them! There have been many times in my life that I haven’t backed myself where others have, and nowhere could this be truer than in rowing. I’ve been lucky in meeting coaches like Simon, Tony, Linda, Stuart and Sue who have given up their time and shared their experience and passion for the sport with me. I’ve got an awesome family who have done everything from giving me lifts to training (both in peak hour and stupidly early hours of the morning), travelling half way around the world to support me (and take in the sites), walk and feed my mongrel of a dog while I’m away, send me ‘harden the f**k up messages, and of course, get laughs out of the numerous Facebook photos I have found myself in throughout the adventure. Relatives, all my mates, and I could go on and on!

Now is the time to back ourselves and each other as a crew. We have put in the work, and we know that we are more than capable of racing a good race. Of course I want to win a medal here as I’m sure we all do. The most satisfying feeling however will come from finishing that race, and knowing that we could not have possibly put more in to it than we did. I can’t wait for Saturday to arrive, and I can’t wait to celebrate with a very cold beer (or ten).

You can watch the action of the world rowing championships, complete with live streaming, at www.worldrowing.com. Watch out for the LTA4 final with our very own green and gold.

As we follow Carol Cooke’s personal journey, and following on from our previous post ‘When five become one‘ Carol shares with us a little about her motivation and how she has spent the past 11 years, believing in the impossible.

For the past few days I have been running around like “a chook with its head cut off”! Trying to get things done before we head to Penrith for our staging camp.

Now that I am sitting down to catch my breath it has really hit me…this is really happening! It has been months coming and it is really a bit surreal. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realize that I am actually a member of the Australian Rowing Team!

Just over 11 years ago, April 23rd, 1998 to be exact, I had a neurologist tell me that my life as I knew it was over, to go home and get my affairs in order before I became incapacitated and that because I had Multiple Sclerosis I would never do any sport or exercise again. There are times when I just shake my head and think “If he could see me now”, oh how wrong he was!

On that fateful day, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that my life would take the direction it has. When I am talking to groups I always ask them “What would you attempt to do if you knew that you could not fail?” I have always headed into situations not really thinking about whether or not I would fail and with this challenge, at this point, we have more than surpassed my expectations. We can only get better from here on in and I have great hopes for this crew. What we have accomplished in the last couple of months is extraordinary!

After our last campaign, attempting to qualify for the Beijing Paralympics, I really didn’t know if I would get another shot at representing my country. Lets face it, I am probably the oldest person to ever make the Australian team. At 47, well 48 next week, this was not what I envisaged for myself at this point in my life. But I have to say that my life has been ingrained with that great Aussie expression “she’ll be right mate”. This has shaped who I am.

I guess my greatest tool is my ability to believe in myself and my capabilities. I believe that you should live your life to the fullest, laugh, cry, scream, shout, whatever you want to do – just get out there and do it. If you don’t see yourself abseiling, caving or evening rowing for that matter – find that one thing you have never thought you could do and give it a try.

A friend of mine gave me one good piece of advice and that was “to live life without fear, confront all obstacles and know that you can overcome them. Nothing is impossible if we dare to face our fears and believe in ourselves.” Thanks for inspiring me Warren.

So I go into this next phase of this adventure with no fear and expecting the best. I have no doubt that the rest of crew will be thinking the same!

If we went into every day expecting the best, with no fear and belief in ourselves, imagine what we could achieve. What’s holding you back?

Traversing a distance like this by foot across one country that includes 22 provinces, 5 special administrative regions and 4 municipalities will introduce one to different minority groups, languages, scenery, food and adventures.

Christop Rehag did just that from November 9, 2007 to November 13, 2008. This clip has soul, colour, vibrancy and some awesome visuals of a country steeped in history and incredible scenery.

Imagine spending a year on foot, one step at a time.

This journey is inspirational. I’d ask you to think if you went through your own life one step at a time, rather than in a blur, and put each day into a slideshow, would it be soulful? Colourful? Vibrant? Full of movement? Memorable?

The Longest Way 1.0 – one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

Peter Weinberger travelled with me on a nine day trip through China.  On a nine day trip, you would think the checklist would be pretty tight: Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, dumplings, crowds, Forbidden City, Tianamen Square. When I asked Peter to recount a vivid memory from our time together, none of the checklist even got a mention.

Instead, Peter reminded me about the joy to be found in the unexpected… and looking up.

One thing I remember from our time in China was being in Xi’an late at night. We’d started with karaoke and managed to humiliate the only poor teenager in the group by making his mother sing Motown songs in front of him. We moved on to the disco and ran into another Intrepid Group. I remember these 20 something girls in that group who just thought they were so damn special — these well fed Australian girls who were only getting attention because they were the only game in town and rather then being engaging and sociable, they were revelling in their finally feeling that they were hot. Yech. So we moved away from them and drank and drank with the locals to Chinese pop music.

Finally, we were walking home together, you, me Brian and another Intrepid guide and perhaps another person or two. The night had taken on a bit of a melancholy feel. I’m not sure why. It was hot and humid and even though it was midnight, people were sleeping outside on some big central square because it was so damn hot. It was a friendly crowd, and unlike in the U.S. there were no drunken jerks, no roving gangsters looking to cause trouble. They were just normal people and families, eating, drinking, singing and playing games, enjoying the warm weather under a moonlit sky.

And then we happened upon the oddest site. A middle aged man in thin baggy shorts that made him look like he was walking around in his boxers He had an equally worn out tank top undershirt. He was dragging behind him an open sided trailer. Filling up the entire bed of the trailer was a 20 foot long telescope. It was the most unwieldy thing one could imagine. I have no idea how he got it in the trailer or how he managed to drag it to the park. (Or where he got a 20 foot telescope.)

The man was selling views of the rings of Saturn for one RMB – about twelve cents. It was a surreal scene. We had just left the loud partying in the disco, girls and boys drinking and trying their best to look cool and pretty, we were wandering between families playing mah jong and getting ready for bed outside. And here, in the midst of this, was this odd man, in the middle of the silent city, encouraging people to look at the stars, gently urging people to expand their world to include the stars and the rings of Saturn. All of this on a not summer night in the middle of China.

It was an oddly calming and wonderful experience. I don’t know exactly why, but it was just a nice denouement for a hectic evening in a crazy, overcrowded country where just spending the day breathing can wear you out. Tina, this strange guy even seemed to pick you up out of downcast mood. Without saying a word, you were giving off the emotional message that sometimes being an Intrepid guide can be a very lonely job, something that seems impossible in a country that is so over crowded that people must absolutely crave loneliness.

In the midst of these crowds, the emotional torpor of our wonderful guide, and self reflection that Brian and I were going through ourselves — wondering how two 40 something guys got here in our lives — finally allowing ourselves some introspection now that we were away from the never ending demands of girlfriends, children and work. In the midst of all this, we had to remove our gaze from our own navel, slow down, empty our brains of all extraneous thoughts and simply stick our eye to the end of a telescope and look at the stars.

So to add a little fun to the world journeys site, it’s your turn to tell the story. Each Monday, a new image will be added for you to ready, aim, caption.

Please add your caption to the comments at the bottom of each image or visit our Facebook page.

The image will be judged the following Sunday and the winner will receive a grand mention in the following week’s blog story, which will share the real story behind the image.

To kick the competition off, as usual, here’s me in a little bit of a twist.

If you have any images suitable for the competition and would love to share them and the story behind it, please email sharemystory(at)worldjourneys.com.au.

Go on…. ready, aim, CAPTION! We look forward to the laugh.

]]> http://worldjourneys.com.au/2009/08/03/ready-aim-caption/feed/ 1 http://worldjourneys.com.au/2009/07/31/when-five-became-one/ http://worldjourneys.com.au/2009/07/31/when-five-became-one/#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:34:43 +0000 admin http://worldjourneys.com.au/?p=477 If you haven’t read the introduction in a previous post, you might want to get acquainted with Carol Cooke before you read on. Carol’s mega attitude has, and continues to be, an inspiration to many. Her commitment to others with a disability, supporting people living with multiple sclerosis, founder of the MS Mega Swim and Go for Gold Scholarship program, advocacy, fundraising, and importantly, example of pursuing and living one’s dreams continues to motivate all who meet her.

Carol along with Pete Siri, Henry Macphillamy, Alex Green and Lisa Brown, have recently been selected to race for Australia in the LT4 adaptive  rowing world championships in Poland.

As this site is as much about the inner journey as to why we travel and how it inspires us, we are privileged to be able to follow the team’s progress through the eyes, ears and spirit of this remarkable team.

So let’s hear from Carol as we start from the beginning and journey with the team on the race that gained them selection.

We arrived at SIRC just before 7am for our warm up training session. Everyone was pretty keen to get on the water and have the second last row for the weekend. It was a beautiful morning, flat water, a bit chilly but the sunrise was fantastic. We were only doing one lap of the course, concentrating on really becoming one, every movement in time with one another. This may sound really easy but when you have four people, all different sizes and all with different disabilities, well it isn’t that easy!

When we did get back to the shed that is when the hugging and emotion all came out! But we definitely came back to earth as we realized that now the even harder work begins. We have another camp in a weeks time in Sydney, then a week home, then back to Sydney where the staging camp will be held before we head to Europe. But we know that we are going which puts our heads in a better place because we know what we can accomplish. In just three short camps we have really come together as a crew…We Can Row as ONE!

We had a good row and the timing wasn’t too bad, we were finally getting some “send” on the boat. In other words we were finally letting the boat do the work for us. This was something that Pedro (who is coaching us since Tara had left) had been saying to us since day one, “Let the boat do the work, drive with the legs and really build the stroke to the chest, send the boat”. It made perfect sense to us but getting us all to do it together and exactly together has been the tough part. But this morning that came together.

After our row, we headed back to the motel, to pack up, check out and then head back for our final time trial. We all knew we had to do better on this time trial than any of the previous ones. We had to show the selectors that we were improving and deserved to be part of the team heading to Poland. On the way back to the course in the car it was very quite. I think that everyone was really getting into their “zones”, thinking about what they each needed to do individually to come together as “ONE”.

We all did our own land warm up and at 10:30 a.m. it was “hands on”. With the boat on the water and all of us in our seats we headed out for our warm up. We did a bit longer warm up than the day before and then headed out to the course. Once invited on to the course by the officials we took our position in lane 5 and Lisa had us do one practice start. Wow! what a start it was, the best we had ever done. We backed the boat into the finger and awaited the officials to start us off. Unfortunately we had a bad start! But we were able to correct quickly and we were off.

Lisa called the race brilliantly, she had us lengthen out once the boat was moving and from there had us work each stroke. Not think about the entire race but to concentrate on perfecting each individual stroke. The boat felt good, I know I felt good and the row felt strong and engaged with the water. Before I knew it Lisa was yelling that we had only 250 metres to go. It was incredible, I thought we were only about half way, but we were almost there. She wanted us to dig deeper than we had done before and with 100 metres to go asked for more. I didn’t think I had anymore but incredibly I found some and before we knew it Lisa said to slow it down to steady state.

I don’t think that anything has hurt more than that last 250 metres and I am sure the rest of the crew felt the same. We had finished and we had done the best that we could, now it was up to the selectors. As we rowed past the viewing stands, the crowd were clapping and at that point Lisa said to us “That’s for us” and I must say it felt good. Now all we had to do was wait for the verdict.

When we got back to the landing, Pedro was there waiting for us and congratulated each one of us. We had a few supporters there, Henry’s parents and guide dog Billy, Pam, Pedro’s wife and Kathryn Ross another adaptive rower, who congratulated us and told us it was a good row…but to all of us was it good enough?

We sat around for a while hoping that one of the selectors would come and speak with us, but we were getting cold and decided to have showers and change. Once we were back at the shed we were told that we were to attend a meeting with the rest of the Senior team. I think we were all on pins and needles hoping that this was when we would be given the nod. But no the meeting was about how well everyone had done over the weekend and to wish the Under 23 representatives good luck, as they were leaving for Europe the next day. Then Andrew Mathieson said he wanted the LTA crew to stay so he could speak with us. Well I can tell you a few things went through my head! And most of them were negative!

When Andrew did finally come over to us, he stated that he was happy with how we had progressed over the weekend and that as far as he and other selectors we concerned they were going to put our names forward to the Rowing Australia board for inclusion on the Australian Team for the World Championships in Poland. Well I think everything else went off in my head! We were going! And to be honest the relief was overwhelming. I don’t think there was much of a reaction from any of us right away and I am sure Andrew was a bit miffed about why we weren’t jumping for joy. I think it had been such a tough slog and mentally tough that it took a while for it to sink in. I know that walking back to the shed it hit me and I actually became quite emotional. All the hard work had paid off.

Inspired by Sigourney Weaver, it was a childhood dream to visit the gorillas in the mist. As part of my four month journey through Africa, there was no way I was going to miss an opportunity to fulfill this dream. The ridiculously expensive visa, bribery at the border, broken buses, pointed arrows, armed guards and warnings of vigilantes were not going to stop me. It’s not every day one attempts to fulfill a lifelong dream. Throw in stubborness, ambition and attitude and there was no way anyone was going to stop me trekking the Ruwenzori’s in search of my very own gorilla experience.

Stashed in my storage shed in Brisbane is some incredible footage of the mountain gorillas I encountered over two days of long treks. From only three metres away, the experience I had over these days is one that will never leave the memory banks.It is also an example of never letting opportunity pass by, for you never know when it may pass your way again. In the case of the Ruwenzori gorillas, due to poaching, war, disease and murderous attacks, the opportunity for others to experience this journey is now, unfortunately, diminishing. If not, impossible.

But this story is not about gorillas. It is about imprints. About faith. So let’s pull out the memory card and share the colour and vibrancy of a story that deserves as much mention as the gorillas.

It was my turn to cook breakfast. Only problem is I’m about 2600m asl, surroundered by jungle, in the middle of Zaire, have two armed guards on my tent, there’s no local corner store for about 500km and all we have left is a couple of smoked fish.

Never one to be undone and passionate about cooking, no matter where I am, I was pondering my options (for all of about two minutes considering there was only one) when I heard a voice from the distance.

Hi. My name is Elvis. Can I help you?

Looking up, I cast my eyes over a young boy: a skeleton covered in a dirty orange tshirt, ripped shorts, no shoes and scabs and open wounds covering his body.

Never one to refuse an offer of assistance, I sit down with young Elvis and chat with him a little about his life, his home, his existence. Although the size of an 8 year old, Elvis was actually 13 and quite bright given his non-existent education.

Eggs. It’s a rural paradise. Bound to be some chickens around the place. Always thinking, I finally had another option besides tuna on toast.

Do you think you could organise some eggs? I’ll need about 20.

No problem m’aam. I will get them for you.

Now I can’t exactly dig back into the memory bank to exactly specify how much I gave young Elvis to pay for the eggs. But with the smallest note in my pocket being 1million zaires, I figure I gave him about $5 to organise our breakfast feast. Waving him farewell, he headed off with a huge grin on his face and a promise that he’d bring the eggs as soon as he could.

Off I headed to set up my tent, prepare the fire, chop up some vegetables for dinner, wander around the local village, chat with the guards, plan the following day’s expedition, do some laundry and take a nanna nap.

Three hours later, the sun was setting, the night’s fare was smelling mighty good, marshmallows were ready to be toasted and there was no sign of Elvis.

Another hour later, the other four I was travelling with were categorically convinced Elvis had disappeared into the jungle with the equivalent of six month’s salary. How could I be so stupid? How could I have had so much faith?

As the temperatures plummetted and marshmallows ran low, I started mixing up some smoked fish and potato in preparation for an early breakfast. As I looked up at the shadows of the Virunga volcanoes, a small figure broke through the evening mist from the depths of the plateau below.

Miss. I am sorry it take me so long. So very sorry.

I am a self-confessed sook. I cry at sad movies. I sob when others feel pain. I feel anguish at the suffering other humans must endure. When I saw this skeleton of a boy walk towards me holding his tatty orange shirt out from his front, filled with the requested 20 eggs, I could not hold back the tears. Not because I was sad. In the back of my mind, I had already said goodbye to my $5 and had hoped Elvis and his family would use the funds wisely.

Elvis had walked for six hours from village to village in search of our breakfast. In a subsistence economy where the chickens are as malnourished as the children, he was lucky to find even one egg at each property he visited. And as I had given him the highest value note in the currency, his ability to extract change from any of the locals was a task, that in itself, required a great deal of negotiation, tact and honesty.

I cried because out of the depth of poverty came an incredible example of trust, faith, honesty and a young man keeping his word, despite every opportunity to win the lottery.

A couple of day’s later, all of the boys from the surrounding villages turned up at the camp to offer assistance in carrying our packs to the base of the mountain. Half the size of all the other boys, I headed straight for Elvis and gave him the job. I soon realised my pack was as big as him, so opted to carry my own while he took my day bag. We walked for six hours down the mountain hand in hand, like two old friends that knew they would soon part.

Talk about imprints. Siting and spending time amongst the gorillas of the mist is one of my most memorable travel experiences – both the getting there, and the time observing their grace and power.

I never travel purely for the sights. As I’ve mentioned before, interaction with the locals is something I seek and gain much pleasure from.

Next time someone tells me to buy a lottery ticket, I won’t be rushing out. Elvis had six hours of opportunity to have a winning ticket. But he reminded me there are so many other ways that we can be winners.   The lessons he taught me will never die. They will never leave the building.

Reflecting on Jen’s story from Monday’s post, reminded me of one of my passenger’s feedback reports from a trip to Cambodia.

With the assistance of Jen’s and Vic’s reflections, it certainly reminded me of some incredible memories and experiences I had with the children whose paths I crossed during my time in Cambodia.

If you haven’t been to Cambodia, the children are everywhere. Selling books. Selling drinks. Selling sweets, bracelets, food, tuktuk rides, postcards and even themselves. These shrewd businessmen and women confront you at every corner, every temple, every restaurant and every hidden corner of the country.

I still tell the story of a young boy, who, at one of my many visits to Angkor Wat, asked me if I wanted a bottle of coke for $2.The conversation then went something like this:

No thankyou, I don’t need it.

What about some postcards – only $2.

No thanks, I already have too many.

What about these bracelets – 10 for $2.

No, I don’t need any.

You need some water miss. It’s very hot in there. $2.

I already have some.

Miss, what can I get you? All for $2.

Nothing, thanks.

Ok miss. I give you nothing. For $2.

The innocence of childhood is lost amongst the need to collect as many $2 as one can in the name of survival.

And it is for this reason, that I cherised my time at the Angkor temples when I allowed myself the opportunity to show the kids how to let loose their inner child.

Having left my own well worn trampled paths over the bones of those tortured by the Khmer Rouge at the Phnom Penh Killing Fields and the temples of Angkor Wat, it didn’t take me long to decide that my time would be better spent hanging out with the kids.

Armed with footballs, paper, coloured pens, crayons, balloons and on the odd occasion, a bicycle, I always came prepared for the ensuing battle. Arriving at these obvious well known tourist sites, one cannot help but get a little hot and bothered with the constant ’smile’, ‘take a picture’, ‘give me money’, ‘want to go to school’, ‘need food’ cries from the mouths of babes.

I felt what they did need over photographs, money, cookies and attitude (theirs, not mine) was a little bit of fun. A little bit of childhood.

I’d encourage them to draw pictures of their homes (ok… hut), family (it always included the obligatory cow and tree), themselves (always cleaner and well dressed) and me (always taller, more beautiful and better dressed).

Blowing balloons, fly away peter stories, what’s the time games, quad push bike rides, reams and reams of paper, white girl vs beggar team football matches, tackles, stories, piggy backs, questions, artwork. And then there was the smiles. And the laughter, that if I close my eyes and recall, can hear echo deep within, it is so permanently etched on my memory.

Give them $2, they’ll be back tomorrow still flogging their postcards and cans of coke. Give them a childhood, even for an hour, and you give them the world – well, at least one with a guaranteed happy ending, albeit for ten minutes.

We all know that when travelling we should leave nothing but footprints. I say baloney to that. When you travel, leave nothing but imprints.

If I had $2 for every imprint those small encounters have made on my life, they would all want for nothing.

In a previous life as a tour leader working for Intrepid Travel, I always endeavoured to build a connection between the locals and my passengers wherever possible. One of my passengers, Jen LaVin, has offered her experience of our time together in Cambodia. Although it was four years ago, Jen’s memory has been etched with the faces of a group of young orphans.  When I first met these children, they had never been to a small island about one hour from Phnom Penh. Neither had I. So that made for opportunity… isn’t that what travel is all about?

Enjoy Jen’s etching…

This has certainly been one of the most remarkable 24 hours of my life.  A day that could truly change a person.  We’re in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a city I’m finding to be quite charming, with a faded French Colonial feel and warm people, very quick to smile.  I didn’t feel this in Bangkok or in Saigon, so I’m pleasantly surprised to feel so comfortable here.

After a two-hour chartered boat trip up the Mekong, playing tourist for a while and checking in on the internet, our first evening in Phnom Penh, a small group of us from our tour group met up with our tour leader at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.  They have a roof deck bar that overlooks the main street of the city and the Mekong—quite relaxing with pitchers of the local Angkor beer, but also quite sobering, contemplating all the horrors journalists must have witnessed during their time here.  Our next stop was a local pizza place.  I know, pizza in Cambodia…but it turned out that the place is owned by two people who have started a school in the back for orphans, so all donations and profits go towards the kids.  And the pizza was actually good, even without making it ‘happy’ or ‘very happy.’

As if this weren’t enough, our tour leader surprised us and had arranged for the orphans to do a show of traditional Cambodian dances for us.  Since the horror of the 1970s, Cambodian art and music are slowly being re-introduced into society.  It is one of the foundations of this school/orphanage.

Seeing the children sing and dance in their brightly colored costumes was truly inspiring.  I wondered if they understood the importance of what they were doing.  At the end of the performance, we were invited up on stage to dance with the children.  Needless to say, it was a very special evening.  But it was only the beginning.

We began today at the genocide museum, Tuol Sleng prison, an old high school that had been turned into torture center S-21 by the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s.  It’s very hard to put into words what we experienced there, in fact, not everyone in our tour group could even bear to stay the whole time.  I was glad I had already seen The Killing Fields and read a fair amount about what the Khmer Rouge did there…made it a little easier.  But it was still shocking.  Only seven people survived the camp—the only ones still alive when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia.  They discovered 14 corpses there when they arrived, people who had been tortured beyond recognition; these last 14 victims are buried in the courtyard of the high-school-turned-prison-turned-museum.

Our guide for the day was himself a survivor of the camps.  He worked in the rice fields as a human ’scarecrow’ from when he was six to nine years old, separated from his family and living in barracks with hundreds of other children.  He ended up losing his father and many of his siblings, mostly to illness as a result of malnutrition.  Hearing his first-hand stories only made the experience that much more disturbing and real.

Our next stop was out a dry, dusty and bumpy dirt road to the local killing fields just outside of the city’s center, where we learned even more about Pol Pot and his regime from our guide.  In a span of just a little more than three years, it’s estimated he systematically exterminated four million Cambodians, roughly half the country’s population at the time.  Why?  It’s not clear that anyone really knows.  It is surmised that he wanted to create a utopian, agrarian society.  But starving your workforce just doesn’t seem to fit with that model.  I think he was just a nut job.

Eight thousand victims’ skulls are housed in a monument at these particular fields.  And our guide was quick to point out pieces of bone and teeth still visible in the dirt on the paths we were walking on.  One can’t stand there and not feel changed.

Amazingly, we learned that many who participated in the atrocities are still involved in the country’s government, some at the highest levels.  While this seemed totally incomprehensible to us naïve Westerners, when asked how this could be, our guide merely smiled politely and told us that “forgiveness is one of the fundamental principles of Buddhism.”  I found this to be one of the more enlightening lessons of the day.

In an attempt to lighten things up a bit, we headed back into town for an epicurean delight at a restaurant/school that helps teach local teens the hospitality trade in an attempt to keep them off the streets and off drugs.  The service was amazing as they eagerly waited on us.  And the food didn’t disappoint.  There was also a very nice Western-style bathroom at the restaurant (a rarity along our route…) that was very fancy, complete with hand towels and walls plastered with anti-Dubya cartoons and such.

After enjoying our meal, our leader provided us with yet another very welcome surprise—Tina had arranged for all 21 of the orphans from last night to spend the afternoon with us.  In local Tuk Tuks, we ventured out to an island not far from Phnom Penh.  We made a quick stop at the local Central Market to buy some fruit, drinks and some balls and toys for the kids, and then headed across a bridge to a first island, one with lots of quite modern houses and restaurants, and then to a ferry to cross to a smaller island where most of the population weave silk under their stilt houses, sow their fields with water buffalo and live in unbelievably poor conditions by our standards, but fairly well by theirs.

Spending the afternoon with the children proved to be the perfect antidote to our depressing morning activities.  The children were loving and kind and seemed genuinely happy to be spending time with us.  it didn’t matter that we didn’t speak the same language.  Most of them had never been on a boat before, making the simple ferry ride an exciting adventure; and all of us delighted in seeing their faces as jumbo jets flew low overhead—apparently an uncommon sight over downtown Phnom Penh.

You can’t help but worry what will happen to these kids, as many of them are too old to be adopted.  We’ve already seen so much—kids with baskets of Xeroxed books for sale, shoeless kids carrying babies and begging for food or money, kids who know every trick in the book to try to guilt tourists into buying their wares.  You have to wonder if they’re ever allowed to be kids.  You wonder how much they really know about the world and all its possibilities.  You fear for their safety and their future.  But it did all of us a world of good to be able to give at least one afternoon of fun and joy to this particular group of orphans.

I found myself sad when we finally had to say goodbye, my hands uncomfortably empty with no little ones to hold onto them.  But I also felt incredibly uplifted by the experience and eager to explore ways in which I could help these children and others like them.

It’s been an amazing day—to have witnessed firsthand both the worst and the best of Cambodia, both its horrific past and its bright future.  It’s an experience that’ll be hard to get my head around, and one that I’m sure will stay with me forever.

(c) Jen LaVin

Feel free to sharemystory(at)worldjourneys.com.au.

To be more accurate, I have just completed working my way around an emotional tapestry filled with candour, self-deprecating humour and indulgent ecstacy as she candidly shares her anguish and joy on her very personal world journey.

As someone who endeavours to weave emotion and observation together when I write in a style that is honest and personal, I appreciated the ability Elizabeth has to share the ups and downs we all face with flagrant and visual detail.

I certainly am a firm believer that the terms indescribable and beyond words perhaps should not be in our vocabulary. A fairly big statement, considering they are and used by us all.

However, I would challenge that when in situations where we cannot express accurately how we are feeling, there is an opportunity to take a step back and honestly explore our emotions, physical sensations, history and realisation of how poignant the situation has been to our life, and perhaps those of others. And this is what Elizabeth does so honestly.

Eat Pray Love is all about the search for self. It’s an enjoyable read which, depending on one’s own circumstance, allows for an introspective review of one’s own journey.

I found a speech presented by Elizabeth on TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). Like the book, the speech is personal, humurous and poignant. It’s not about travel, but it’s well worth the almost half hour viewing time as Elizabeth shares her view that instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. Be warned: you will be encouraged to take a step back and think about your potential brilliance. It is in there!

Eat, Pray, Love is certainly a book you can read more than once. So head down to your local library, or if you want to add it to your own personal catalogue, Amazon is waiting to take your order.

Eat, pray, love.

Through Elizabeth’s inspiration, next time I venture on a world journey I should do it with a book title in mind. Perhaps love, laugh, karaoke?

What would your book title be?

Feel free to let us know via the comment box below.

As Elizabeth writes:

It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody elses life with perfection.

In anticipation of filling in the pages….imperfectly. And if you have ever heard me at karaoke, you’ll know that is spot on.