11. Bangkok

So this week we got to Bangkok after a long long trip in a minivan shared with 10 asian people and a crazy driver who bribed a policeman not to get a speeding ticket. Luckily the city of angels, as Bangkok is known, didn’t disappoint me. It is filled with its beautifully decorated temples, giant golden Buddhas, colourful food markets and lively canals.

It is funny that apart from really touristic spots, the rest of the city is almost tourist-free. Some of the former spots include Khaosan Road, which we have dubbed “guirilandia” in Spanish, meaning a place full of tacky foreigners, listening to American music while eating a hamburger and thinking "wow, this is so exotic" and the Grand Palace, where they fool you into buying an expensive entrance for seeing basically an emerald Buddha surrounded by sweaty Japanese and loud Italians.

In these touristy areas, people seem to be quite cranky, but elsewhere they welcome you with broad smiles and always try to help you out. We managed to find a couple of very good places to eat there, all of them under 2 euros a meal (!!). There is one great family owned restaurant, with the typical grandmother and 100% traditional food (with the spicy tuned down a bit, luckily!). Another place is a library/restaurant owned by a British expat and a Thai cook… a great combo! And finally, the guest house we are in right now is very comfy and has great staff too.

With all this, I could say it’s been a great pleasure being here, but I must confess I am more than ever counting the days (or rather the hours) to get back home and eat mom-cooked meals, sleep in my bed and see all my friends and family. Home, sweet home.

10. Heading west again

Since last week time has gone by quite quickly. The first couple of days were just full of washing up and getting things ready for our departure. We were so fed up with not moving that we decided to head to Battambang one day before the established date. It turns out it was a great choice, as the hotel there was quite luxurious (especially if we compare it with our previous standards) and it even had a pool!!

So on Thursday we had a sunny morning bathing in the pool, after which we felt like a million bucks. On the afternoon we visited the Buddhist University to try to make an agreement with them for the project. We were received by around 30 monks in their orange robes and a heavy thunderstorm with heavy rain. It was quite a strange meeting, where they asked for much but didn't offer in return, but it was interesting and at the same time surrealist to be there.

On Friday we headed out of the country through Pailin, with a beautiful road and some nice temples along the way. We had to cross the border walking, and once on the other side pay a taxi to take us to the pier. The sky was desperately cloudy on the boat and it has remained the same way for the last days. I guess it is the rainy season here in Koh Chang. But scenery is incredible, and with hammocks overlooking the ocean sprinkled with a little bit of adventure on a motorbike riding like Brits, the days have gone by all right.


On a couple of days we will be leaving to Bangkok...!

9. Departures

Here I am once again. Let me tell you about this week, which has been quite a rollercoaster.

As I told you last time, I started the week counting the days that separate me from the return to civilization. So you can imagine that a week with a fair share of rain (let me translate: muddy/slippery tracks and wet clothes) was more than enough to get me lazy and even more looking forward to the end of the week.

Moreover, since the end of the year was approaching, teachers relaxed completely and missed some of their classes, and some of mine as well. So I finished the week quite tired and when they told me there would be a party on Saturday to celebrate that the end of the year was close I was quite pleased.

I was supposed to work until Tuesday, so when the party was over and some kids started telling me goodbye I thought it was just a “see you later” kind of greeting. It seemed strange that some seemed so sad and kept talking about my trip back to Spain, but it all made sense when I found out (already back home) that it was indeed my last day in the school.

So somehow I left without saying a proper goodbye to many of the kids, and the strange thing is that teachers didn’t greet me either, which for us westerners is kind of strange, to say the least. I am thus left with the strange feeling that things have ended without me noticing it, and somehow I think the feeling will remain for quite some time.

It is as though from one day to another, whole relationships have been left undone and ties have been cut, because after two months of ups and downs, I had become very attached to kids, and apparently they too. That is why, when they asked me when I would come back, it was heartbreaking for me to answer "I don't know", hiding an almost certain “Never”.

But as my favourite sentence goes, "The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.” So we go on, move on, depart.

8. Surprise, surprise

They say you are supposed to be completely adapted to a country when you stop discovering things about it. Well, I guess I am still far from this, as I started telling you last week. Here is just a list of new things discovered by explorer-Sarah in the last days:

Fact no. 1: If a dog here is hit on the road, the owners of the animal fear that the driver of the car will take it and sell it …To bars, where he will become a first-class appetizer for drunk people.

Fact no. 2: The 15^th of July marks the beginning of a Buddhist holiday that lasts three months and in which a candle is lit the whole time! My Buddha, that is a big candle! Apparently monks also have the right to go from home to home (and inside the schools, too) asking for food and money. If you don’t give it to them (like in our house of strange/foreign people) they look at you with disappointment… And probably curse you for a thousand years.

Fact no. 3: It is illegal to bet in the lottery in this country, but if you bribe the police, you can have Thai and Vietnamese tickets in your house without risking a fine. Turns out a lot of people use this trick and lottery is quite popular, because you never know, you might have a lucky strike and become rich overnight.

Fact no. 4: When reaping season comes, just around this time, whole families move to the back of the houses of the owners of the field and camp there, working from dawn till dusk. They get paid only for each bag of rice or corn collected, and only 1 or 2 dollars. It is just enough for one day food for one adult, but they don’t work the whole year, have many kids and no kind of health care or insurance. So children have to work with their parents following them from field to field. They don’t get any kind of education either, so their future seems hopelessly sealed to the land.

Fact no. 5: two months is a long time. Living in these conditions of isolation, surrounded by poverty and with a strict routine has taken its toll on all of us and we are starting to anxiously await our return to the “modern and civilized world”. It will be soon, the next 28^th of August, when we will visit Battambang and then leave to Thailand for a much merited 10-day rest.

Let me stop here before I fill three pages of good and bad discoveries, hopefully we can laugh about them in person soon enough. Have a happy week in whatever part of the world you may be and, above all, think about me next time your toilet flushes and your shower delights you with warm water.

7. The so called rainy season

One of the main things I’ve learnt here is that everything is always different than what you expect it to be. This might seem surprising, but it is no wonder when you are, almost literally, on the other side of the world. Let’s just say things are upside down most of the time.

So, for example, I find my weekend-day (Sunday) here is much more boring than my weekdays, which I never would have guessed. Mainly because we cannot go anywhere, and although staying at home is nice, having on the one hand no internet, no books to read, no TV, and on the other tons of washing and cleaning to do (well, to say the truth I need both hands for this) makes it the most boring day by far!

Another surprise is the so called rainy season. It was supposed to rain every day, or that’s what I expected. Instead, this region is one of the exceptions, and here it almost doesn’t rain at all in July! Last week, I told you this made my trips easier, but this week has just been horrible because of the dust. I swear I could feel my lungs rusting with dirt!! Thanks to the sky, rain finally fell on Sunday.

The great discovery of this time was pan-pon-pin-pan-pon. What the hell is that, you might ask? Well, it was a sound we heard every morning, and it turns out it is the bread seller! So now we can have a French-style breakfast (probably one of the only good things they left in this country.

6. Sweet and sour

So we started July in Sampov Loun. It is supposed to be the rainy season here, although luckily almost no rain has fallen yet (which almost left us without water in our shower). Amazingly too, the bridges to my school have been finished (!), which is great as it makes rainy trips much less difficult.

Days are starting to roll on quite fast as I am starting to get used to the temperature and also to my work, which makes everything easier. Students begin to remember things and have become really trusting, playing with me and trying to talk a bit of English. Today we spent the day preparing wonderful drawings for the kids.

On the Khmer side of it, I have basic-words-for-survival-knowledge, which comes in quite handy in dinners like the two we have had this week with the teachers. I feel I have found my little space in this place, where I seem to be able to belong quite comfortably for one more month.

The downside, as there always is one, is that someone stole my wallet this week. As you can imagine, this is a huge pain in the ass, especially as it makes it the second time since I got here (seriously, what is wrong with me?!?!). However I must put things in perspective, and there is nothing more I can do but move forward. So, more next week, and pictures whenever I get decent internet.

Chapter 5: And you say this is routine?

Here I am once again. As incredible as it may seem, I got here one month ago, and things are still falling into place right now. Getting used to life here is a challenge from the second you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. Here is how my day goes on:

I wake up at 6h30 everyday, to enjoy a peaceful breakfast made up of tea and some biscuits. Well, to tell the truth, it is not always peaceful, as generally the first thing to do is to bathe in anti-mosquito (a great smell for the early morning), put water to boil, kill the ants in the sugar....

Anyway, at 7h30 one of the teachers picks me up on his motorbike. The road is generally quite bumpy, which helps me come down to my earthly duties. When I get to school, it is almost eight, so I go into the classroom and I am greeted by all the students, reciting some poetry about something in Khmer, to which I reply O Kun (Thank you) before moving on to 3 hours of teaching.

By 11h30 I am hungry as hell, so I discover with great surprise the rice that is my daily meal. In less than 10 minutes, the kids start getting to the library, where I eat, and start drawing, coloring, playing… At 13h00 I am back to work (What is your name? How old are you? Where are you from? What is your name? How old are you? Where are you from? ) until 17h30, with half an hour of rest.

I get home just in time for a throw-yourself-some-cold-water-with-a-pot shower, then I eat lunch and go to bed… at 9! This goes on every week for six days, and the seventh is dedicated to.... resting? You wish! There are always house chores and lessons to prepare.

One would think this is a crazy way of spending holidays, but if I could show you the smiles of the kids, the baby steps in communicating with people of completely different backgrounds and all the discoveries and surprises, maybe you would understand.

Chapter four: the lost-and-found temples of Angkor

I must say this trip to Angkor was much expected, as it is going to be about the only one we will be able make due to the 6-day-schedule and the bad road conditions during the rainy season. As you can imagine, expectations were high, but luckily the temples didn’t let us down.

After a long trip of almost 6 hours by taxi and bus, we finally got to Siem Reap, where we rediscovered the joys of civilization: air-conditioned, warm shower, automatic flush! The following day we woke up to start our tuk-tuk tour of temples with a greyish weather, which, for once, I welcomed since it made the heat less intense. Apart from loosing some money and my 3-day-pass, the visit was great and all the details in the temples amazed me, with a feeling of “I never thought I would see this first hand” following me everywhere.


The second day we woke up early –and when I say early, I mean early, 4h30 am- to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Although, as always, there were many Japanese tourists, I was able to find a quiet spot and enjoy the incredible panorama as the sun was starting a new day.



We then continued the tour, with amazing sites such as Bayon and its hundreds of happy Buddha faces, and the following day we ended our tour with a temple built by women, Banteay Srei, and a river carved with shrines to bless the water. I could go on and on about these temples, but the beauty was more than words can express, so I hope you can imagine it through the pictures.

Anyway, they say good things always come to an end, so I am back to Sampov Loun, with daily life as before, so I better get back to my cleaning labours!

More next week. And more pictures coming when I'll get internet again!

Chapter three: school days are back

So, first week of action! Let me say it has been longer than I thought, as getting used to places always takes quite a long time, especially when you have to get used to washing your clothes by hand, flushing the toilet with a bucket, washing teeth with bottled water, spraying anti mosquito all day long…

As for my work, I have to say teachers are really nice and we have started a contest: I bet I will learn Khmer before you learn English. For now I am close to wining, I can already count to 10, say my name, my age, my country of origin, that I am a teacher...

Apart from that they always take care of me, bringing me ice for the water, fresh fruit, baked muffins… They also pick me up from home, and I’ve been lucky, it has only rained one day, so I was able to avoided repeated odysseys of mudded roads. One is more than enough for the whole week.

Students are the sweetest children, especially the little ones. Even those who are 16 years old still have an innocent look in their eyes. Teaching them has been a challenge as I didn’t know their level at all, and some know a little bit while others can’t even read the Latin alphabet.

Oh, I almost forgot that for my birthday we went to eat traditional soup with some teachers. This was quite a lot of fun and certainly a birthday different from all the others. Well, this is about it, I will upload some pictures later, as right now I'm on my way to Angkor!

Chapter two: On the way to Sampov Loun, true Cambodian style.

Here I am a couple of days later, from now on, Sundays will be my official reporting days, so mark your calendars! Anyway, I want to tell you what happened from last time you read this, which is quite a lot, so let me get down to it.

First we met up with the doctor that coordinates the project, here in Cambodia. His name is doctor Ka (I know it sounds like a horror movie or something) and he thanked us for coming to work in the countryside, as even Cambodians themselves don’t do it. This got us a little scared but we were leaving the following day, so there was no turning back.

The bus ride was 5 hours long, with a great breakfast and air conditioning! Not too bad, you might think... Well, let me tell you we did 300 km only and most of the time there was a loud American action movie dubbed in Khmer, accompanied by the honking of the driver which seemed to take pride on scaring every living soul, be it truck, moto, bike or chicken!

Nonetheless, we got safely to Battambang, an ex-colonial city where we ate and got ready for volume 2: the way to Sampov Loun. We did this second part on a private taxi, during three hours. Again, you might think this is cool, but there is always a downside: it had just rained so the road was more of a mud track than anything. We did manage to get to the destination, but with mud up to the ears!

The house was the only good surprise with no buts of the day. Big, quite new, very clean and with a huge room for us girls!!

On the following day, we visited the schools where we will be working, with plenty of kids watching us with curious yet shy eyes. We didn’t get to talk much with teachers, who only know basic English, but it was quite nice. Luckily, we were under the roof when a huge tropical storm broke out, which didn’t seem to bother the kids playing on the fields!

On the way back, however, we got stuck on the mud and we had to go down from the motorbikes (on which we were sitting 3 by 3!). The ground was so sticky that I broke my shoes, and this is what my feet looked like after the barefoot odyssey:

At least I got to take a cool shower afterwards (the water from the “bath” comes from the rain directly, and you have to pour it on you with a pot… rustic but refreshing!). At night time we talked with Sophas (read: Sopoa) our step mom here, who told us about her story, the country’s history and the situation of teacher and people in this very poor area. This is what I call immersion!

Today is Sunday, we are all resting and waiting for the heat to go down a bit as it is even to hot to wear glasses (almost no kidding!). Tomorrow will be our first day at school and my birthday… we will see!

Chapter one: first impressions

So I bet couldn't sleep waiting for reports from that far away country from which nobody talks about called Cambodia. Well, here they are, first hand.

We got here yesterday, after a long long flight in which we mainly slept. The good surprises were that the flight from London to Bangkok was quite empty, so we could lay down and sleep. As for the Bangkok-Phnom Penh part, they gave us food even if the flight lasted less than an hour!! And although we had to eat kind of in a hurry, in less than 10 minutes, the food was really good!

When we got here, it was 6 pm, pitch dark, quite warm and with plenty of mosquitoes flying around. Two people from the project picked us up in a tuck-tuck, and on we went to the hotel. Apart from some salamanders running down the corridor and cockroaches in the bathroom, it's pretty clean, we have internet, air conditioning and food is quite good, so no problemo!

Tomorrow we are moving to Battambang, our last stop before the small village where we are staying, Sampov Lun. We have talked with a doctor from here who warned us about the dangers and problems in the area: in boca al luppo!

On the touristy happy side, there are great places in Phnom Penh like the National Museum, with many statues of Buddha and Hindu divinities, the Royal Palace, the silver Pagoda, the wats (Buddhist temples) and the central market.

(more pictures later)

On the kind-of-more-negative-but-also-exotic side, streets are quite crowded, with much traffic, the heat is intense (though not as bad as I thought), the smells are kind of what you would expect from sewer and it is quite touristy, so you can’t walk a single mile without being offered food, guides, a tuk-tuk…

All in all, the least I can say is that this is another world, with many different and surprising things but, as this is only a report of my first impressions, I will end here for today. More to come…

Vaccinations. Or how the National Health System failed once again.

Most of you know I never take any medicine and I never go to the doctor. Now I know why.

I should start by saying that I come from another region of Spain (Tudela) from where I study (Madrid). So although it’s called national health system, you have to ask to have a doctor assigned in the region you live, which of course I didn’t have, because I never use them.

Big mistake, as it turns out. Why? Simply because for any vaccination, you must have a doctor assigned so as to be reimbursed and have someone who will do the injections. So when I found this out at the beginning of the week, as well as the fact that I couldn’t be vaccinated of everything because I only have 3 weeks before leaving, it kind of freaked me out.

As you might imagine, this was kind of a chaos and I had to tell my mom to go and ask for these vaccines to my doctor in my hometown. This means that I have to go back home to be able to get vaccinated. And you would think more people do this, and it shouldn’t be hard to find these medicines. Here again, it’s not. The doctor couldn't find the one for typhus, so basically I had to buy one vaccination in Madrid. But then I discovered I had to transport it between 2 and 8ºC, so I thought what the hell?!?!

My next step was to ask my partents to call all pharmacies in Tudela, where finally we found one that had everything I needed, despite what the doctor had said. Or at least I hope so, fingers crossed!

So this leaves me here, after a week running from one place to the other, dealing with confused people who don't know what they are talking about. Anyway, I will be taking the bus in a couple of hours, and tomorrow, hopefully, I will be completely vaccinated. Thypus and Hepatis A, beware!

*I shall make an entry on malaria, which has no vaccine, next time!

Flowing choices. A philosophy for life.

I feel the best way to get started in this journey is to explain how it all began.

A couple of months ago, I received an email offering internships in a spanish NGO in Cambodia. As always, I thought, how crazy would it be...?

Truth is, as most times, I just stumbled upon something I thought was interesting, and somehow decided to follow it. As my friend says: "Just flow".

So I applied with little hope and a couple of days later I did a "job" interview with the organizers. I knew I had to wait 2 weeks to get the results and I was at home when they called me and said: you are in! I started jumping up and down, I really didn't expect a positive response.

Nevertheless, I then decided to start checking the news -which only included border clashes and dead people-, diseases, thinking that I had to change all my exam dates, leave my appartment, quit my job, get vaccinations... And all in less than a month. I even got a great offer to go to Morocco with another NGO. This is just crazy, I thought to myself.

And still undecided I went to the first meeting. There, they started speaking about how we could help, what the country was like, who we would be meeting, and something just told me: "This is IT". So here I am, learning Khmer, wondering about mosquitoes, changing exam dates... "Just flowing". But more on that later.

So once again...

Hi there!

Those who know me might be wondering why I am writing a blog again... Well, it's quite simple really, my plan is to share with you a new experience. And what experience is that, you might ask? Well, after Canada and Italy, I've taken it a step further: My next stop? Cambodia.

I leave in less than a month, so that leaves me with really little time to plan everything, let alone writing this and I am guessing it will be even harder for me to write from Cambodia. Nevertheless, I will try my best to complete this blog as soon as I can and show you what I will be discovering in that unknown country, which I am sure will be quite a lot!

Thanks for reading, more soon!