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.

After a long day with meetings from 9am until 6pm, I took myself down to the Mekong and ordered a large beer Lao with some morning glory, shrimp and sticky rice, and still came out with change from $4. I thought I deserved it. The rat, pig’s ear and wasp pupa, compliments of my northern Lao experience, although tasty, won’t be joined by any other local delicacies between now and my departure.

As I watched the sunset and a team of rowers trying to scull themselves against the Mekong’s heavy current, I could hear Michael Buble blaring in the background. As I contemplated my five week journey, I certainly felt it was “like I’m living someone else’s life” but the only difference was, I didn’t want to go home.

Marcel Proust said: “The real voyage of discovery consists not only in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes”. I don’t want to go home. The more I learn, the more I want to keep learning. And the more I have my new eyes open.

As I dig into my bag for water, I sift through the samples of children’s books being delivered to rural villages, graphic pictures of UXO (unexploded ordinance) victims who have lost limbs, silkworms still spinning and a camera filled with over 600 photographs of places, faces and change. I recollect a movie I saw today: the depth of a mother’s grief as she recalled the death of her child through a bomb explosion. I will never forget the eyes filled with tears, the bowed head, the silence. The anger inside of how a ’secret war’ could still be causing so much devastation, was quite overwhelming. Estimates predict that it would take another 400 years to clear the country of all the UXO hidden underneath the landscape. And yet the exhibition I saw focussed on the approach of education and allowing us “into the lives of the people that it serves” in order to reach out and create change.

The realisation that I have new eyes really hits me, along with that of not only the journey I have travelled, but the adventures ahead and the desire to ensure I fulfill the commitment to myself and others to make this project a success.

Apart from the fact I have spent five weeks researching, writing and experiencing the world of change through the eyes of those who are creating the change and those whose lives who have been changed, I have also hung out in brothels, slums, communes, villages, walked the streets at night and learned about some incredible projects. Why would I spend 11 hours in a car travelling 250km dropping off silkworm eggs (and that’s just one way) when I could have just sat at home and learned about these projects by email?

Because unless I travelled the path, I could never truly understand. I spent five days with a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, who, despite calls of “crazy woman” from friends and family, has persisted with a lifetime of commitment to providing opportunity to those who have none. This is something that you just cannot learn via email. You have to follow the path and see, hear and experience the work being done.

For one who has spent years experiencing the privileges of travel, it certainly has had a different purpose this time around. I would encourage anyone contemplating a journey to travel with new eyes, or at least, be willing to have one’s eyes open to learn and see a little more than just the major sights and culinary delights of any new destination.

My American friends, Jen and Trev, introduced me to the tunes of Sister Hazel, and I now find myself humming to the tune of my favourite song “you should see the world inside my head”.  As I so often do, tonight, I watched the sunset, “like it’s a big surprise”. And not because I have an extremely vivid imagination, but because I have different eyes.

This will be my last post on this blog for a while. I have a lot to do. Websites to finish. Stories to write. Products to code. Accounts to be finished. Photos to be selected. Wrapping to be decided upon. BAS to be done. Braces to be fitted. A job to find so I can eat. And a return to Melbourne to contend with.

The vision of give.com.au has been strengthened through the humbling, moving and powerful stories I have witnessed. There is still a lot to be done. There are still more stories to be heard. There are still more countries to visit, partnerships to be strengthened and projects to support.

Thank you for your support. Thank you to my friends who continue to encourage me. Thank you to Rob McIntosh, my knight, for his creative support and genius. And importantly, thank you to Frank and Mary.

I look forward to the next twist of the rollercoaster as it spirals upwards full throttle and with the element of unknown as to which way it will twist next. Let’s hope you will continue the ride with me.

So as Sister Hazel sings, I encourage you to get up early tomorrow and “watch the sunrise, like it’s a big surprise”. Think about your passions, what you love to do, and something you are always talking about but never get around to doing. I guarantee you will get a little more than you bargained for. Perhaps it’s the first step onto your very own rollercoaster. Trust me, it’s worth it. You’ll never be afraid of them again. The rollercoasters, or the mountains!

There will be hard work. There will be tears. There will be pain. There will be journeys down one path to only hit a dead end and have to turn around and come back. There will be opportunities to dig deep and push onself to new limits.

And besides. Rollercoasters and mountains both have great views from the top! I’ll see you up there.

x

Vanna doesnt speak much English, but excitedly whips out his Khmer-English dictionary when he finds out I am single. So we chat via translations for most of our journey. From Phnom Penh to Sisophon near the Thai border, Vanna travels the seven hour journey every second week to his job at the local police station. His mum and dad own the Casanova tailor shop in Phnom Penh, so I may pick up a few things on my return now we are about to get married – I think the tailor shop was named after him.

I am always talking to people – it really is the only way to learn about the culture, what the locals enjoy doing in their spare time (Im booked in for a karaoke session on my return), their hopes for the future, their family and what they really think about the $100 million + Khmer Rouge tribunal. Vanna was more than happy to share with me.

He also didnt hesitate at any of the toilet / snack stops to fill me up with food. For every stop, there were a couple more local snacks to try: my taste buds worked their way through bananas coated in sticky rice, boiled peanuts, guava and chilli salt, stuffed eggs, pomello, sour soup, steamed vegetable buns. I think I ate more in seven hours than I had in the previous week. But I enjoyed the taste sensations and the rarity of a local shouting me.

On our arrival at Sisophon, Vanna insisted on taking me to the taxi station on the back of his moto. Two wheels, two bodies, four bags, two bunches of bananas and a 1m ruler later, we headed to the taxi station to bargain my seat on the 30 minute trip to Chupvary. As most locals had already come into town and headed back home, I was the only one around who wanted a taxi, and I wasnt keen on paying the cost for the entire taxi. After liaising with Houen in Chupvary, she organised a taxi to come and pick me up – it just meant I had to wait until the taxi had only one seat left, otherwise I would have to cough up the $10 for the fare.

Vanna didnt want to leave me. He was worried that the taxi wouldnt find me. That I wouldnt be looked after. That I wouldnt be fed. He wanted to be my bodyguard and refused to head home when I said Id be fine. So, we waited. And waited. zzzzzz. And waited. Finally, my taxi arrived. As we said our goodbyes, I got the feeling Vanna would not have minded if the taxi never turned up.

To ensure you have the pleasure of a true John West sardine experience, you will find the taxi drivers in rural areas squeeze in as many people as possible into their taxi. So as Vanna dissappeared into the dust (literally due to heavy roadworks on the highway), I was on one butt cheek with two others in the front passenger seat. In the rear, were five adults, three children and two babies. At least I respect the driver for not being selfish and taking a seat all to himself. After a little bit of shoving, one more managed to squeeze in with his legs around the gear stick and an army major offered his lap to the driver. So all up, 16 of us headed off on our bumpy ride over countless potholes to the village of Chup. All in the size of nothing bigger than a Toyota Corolla.

On a few occasions, we veered off the main road into villages, tucked behind vast rice fields and sugar palm plantations. The major also needed to get back to the base, so we headed into the military zone to drop him off at his door. One of the babies needed a feed, the toilet was desperately required, some bananas needed to be purchased, three phonecalls had to be made and parcels had to be picked up and delivered. Just over an hour after departing Sisophon, I was the sole sardine, surroundered by a slick, oily residue of tissues, banana peels, plastic and nappies.

My trip to Chupvary is one of many off the beaten tracks I have taken over the years. The only difference is, this time I have a small reminder of the journey. Vanna wanted to provide me with a permanent reminder of our seven hour bus ride, and tucked inside my bag is a photograph of him outside a miniature replica of Phnom Penh´s Grand Palace. Together with a nice shiner from the gear stick jammed into my leg, the photo lays testimony to a journey well worth making. Food, entertainment, people, hilarity, kindness: I don´t mind having that kind of residue sticking around for a while to come.

The landscape on this trip is not so much the palaces, the temples, the wats or the countryside. Instead, it is an emotional landscape that has taken me on my own journey of reflection, appreciation, sadness, pride and joy. I have come to appreciate how, no matter how bad things can get in one´s life, that as human beings, we are strong. We can survive. And there will be opportunities presented to us that we can grab with both hands and create change in our lives.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I embrace life, and understands that I certainly don´t intend on living an idle life. There is too much to learn. Too much to experience. Life is a whole, it is a privilege and it provides us with a unique opportunity to find purpose.

I certainly haven´t always been like this. Infact, quite the opposite. However, I have travelled through a transition period and feel I am finally coming out the other side. I have been thinking about how I have changed, and I believe it is simply that I have taken responsibility for my life. The biggest opponent I have faced in the past has certainly been myself, but I now feel that I am no longer taking the corner option, but going into the ring with the fists ready to fight and to embrace whatever punches are thrown.

To others, I probably have an irrational level of optimism. I lack ordinary resentments and regrets – they waste too much time. There is no point in thinking that change cannot occur, for even in worst case scenarios – there is hope. Even here, in the depths of no hope, there is potential, there are gloves. I have seen it in the slums, the brothels, the communes.

Take Salin. At 19, she is the head of her family supporting her grandmother and four brothers – 19, 14, 12 and 5. Both of her parents have died with Aids, leaving Salin with the responsibilities of income earner, cook, educator, gardener and head of her family. I first met Salin when visiting Chupvary, a remote village in north-west Cambodia. She has been embraced by the Hope Project and provided with an opportunity to learn sewing skills and be a part of a project providing uniforms to a number of schools in Phnom Penh. After a full day sewing, Salin heads home to prepare the dinner, work in the garden and care for her brothers and grandmother. Prior to being involved with the Hope Project, there was little hope and no opportunity for Salin. But now there are smiles. This is not about pity. This is about positive change and the provision of opportunity.

Salin´s story is not unique. Everyone here has a story – the Khmer Rouge ensured that the majority of families have a legacy of loss and hardship. But as I walk around this new landscape, I can see the gloves coming out. I can see the hard work, the desire to win and the heads held high when the victory is theirs.

For the organisations providing the gloves, their´s is a continual battle to educate, both foreigners and locals, about choices as much as it is about providing opportunity. A mother will earn more sending out her child to beg or sell books to the tourists than if she learned a new skill and sold the end product. Try and convince a mother to send her child to school and learn how to make handbags herself when double can be made with the child on the streets, all night. But what will happen when the child grows up? No more pity from the foreigners. No more income. And the cycle will begin again.

No mum. This trip hasn´t been enjoyable. But it has been a remarkable journey and I can´t wait to hear about the next bout as I experience a night on the streets speaking with the children and hearing about what they want and how we can help, like Salin, in providing them some gloves so that they can go into their future with their own fists, ready to fight.