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!