Building a Future in Cambodia

Back in October 2010, we made a commitment to spend our spring break in Cambodia working on a community outreach project.  This, is our story.

On the morning of Saturday, April 2nd, 2011, our group of 37 members(18 adults and 19 children) departed for Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  We were going there to perform volunteer work with two charities:  Tabitha and the People's Improvement Organization (PIO).  I'll tell you more about these organizations later.

We left that day for Cambodia with a certain amount of nervous apprehension.  We were going to a place that we knew would be considerably different from Singapore and we didn't know what to expect.  We knew that we were living in one of the richest countries and we were going to visit one of the poorest, so truth be told, we were expecting the worst.  We also knew of Cambodia's recent horrific past.....

In 1975, 5 years of bombing ended when the American backed regime led by Lon Nor, was defeated by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.  At that time, Cambodians thought their troubles were over.

In reality they were only beginning. Only a day later, their world was turned upside down when all of the cities were emptied and the entire populace was sent to the countryside.  What followed was  a three year genocide that saw almost 2 million people killed (20% of the population) in an attempt to return the country to an isolated, classless, agrarian society.   Part of our visit here would see us come face to face with that history and we were fearful to a certain degree about what we might experience. 

Our fears were quickly diverted when we met up with the 30+ strong contingent at the airport in Singapore and set off on our journey.  1 hr. and 40 min. later we touched down in Phnom Penh and headed towards our hotel by bus.  We were staying at the Golden Gate Hotel in the heart of the city and very close to 'embassy row' where most foreign embassies are located.  Our journey to the hotel was an eventful one, but at the same time not terribly different from car trips we had taken in other developing countries.  The roads were cluttered with people on mopeds/scooters, sometimes riding solo, sometimes riding tandem and in some cases we saw people out for a family outing on one scooter.  It's not uncommon to see 3, 4 and sometimes even 5 people on the same scooter.  But on this particular day, we set a new record.....6!!!  That's right, 6 people on the same scooter.  Not sure if I have all the details correct but I believe it was something like this: baby number one on the gas tank, dad driving the scooter, then kids number 2 and 3, followed by mom and finally the eldest child on the back.  I kid you not.   I know you'd have to see this  to believe it, by I'm not making it up.

The other amazing thing is the traffic flow.  Picture a city of over 2 million people with nary a traffic light, except for in the busiest of intersections.  Yet, somehow, miraculously, it works.  Cars and scooters weave through clogged intersections with the least bit of care and the greatest of ease and it appears that no one gets hurt.  No such thing as road rage here. You just go with the flow.  And getting cut off, that happens all the time, but nobody gets mad about it.  It just goes with the territory............ I think North American drivers could all learn something from their Cambodian brethren when it comes to driving.

We checked into our hotel and we were delighted with it.  Located on a quaint side street, everything and anything we wanted was literally a stone`s throw away.   We quickly had lunch at the most incredible rooftop restaurant and acquainted ourselves with the group.

After that, we headed to the Tabitha organizations headquarters for an orientation session about our housebuilding project with Janne Ritskes, the founder of Tabitha.   Tabitha has a number of programs aimed at helping Cambodians become self-sufficient, one of which is providing them with adequate shelter.  We had raised over $18 000 and would be building 10 homes in a small, rural village in the Cambodian province of Kandal, south of Phnom Penh.

Janne gave us some guidelines for when we were working in the village and we learned first hand through her own personal experiences how Pol Pot`s genocidal regime had left a scar on Cambodian society that has yet to heal and how important our work was in helping people develop self-sufficiency and more appropriate standards of living.  We were inspired by her words and couldn't wait to get to work.  But before we did, Janne insisted we learn more about Cambodia`s past.  This would take place the following day when we would visit the Killing Fields and Tol Sleng Prison, known as S21.

Tol Sleng prison is a converted school that was used as an interrogation centre for suspected Vietnamese sympathizers and enemies of the state.  To achieve his dream of an agrarian society, Pol Pot felt he must destroy the middle class or anyone with intellect that might question his policies.  So, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, people who wore glasses etc. were routinely tortured until they made false confessions of guilt.  If victims survived the torture at the hands of their captors, they were then sent to Choeung Ek (the Killing Fields) for execution. 

The visit to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek was an informative, but sombre affair.   A guide took us around and explained where and how people were killed. And as much as we could see firsthand what had  happened here, it felt rather surreal.   

Photo at right:  Mass graves in front of a Buddhist stupa or monument, filled with over 5 000 human skulls exhumed from the site.

The next morning we departed for our housebuilding trip.  We left Phnom Penh and drove an hour and a half to the countryside.   Quite a difference between the city and the country.  The village we went to was a community of a couple hundred people with a dusty, single track path connecting the homes to one another.  No stores here.  The people literally live and work off the land and earn little or no income.  However the people here are content and received us openly, but somewhat tentatively into their community.  

Our group broke up into 4 teams and started building.  All the materials for the build were already on site and the homes were already partially completed.  The homes already had been roofed and framed and were built upon cement pilings about 2 metres in the air.  Our job was to put steel siding on the buildings and to complete the floors inside. Men, women and children worked side by side on the project and with the help of local villagers, we had completed about half of the homes by lunchtime.

After being in the village for several hours, the villagers felt much more relaxed with our presence.  While we were eating our lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, our group of kids had a great time interacting with the village children. Some played soccer, others played jump rope and at one point all of the kids joined together in a game of duck-duck-goose.   Watching the interaction between these kids while we ate our lunch was most enjoyable and was truly one of the highlights of the day.

We got back to work in the afternoon and completed all 10 homes by about 4 p.m.  Everyone converged on the final house at about 3:30 and a team of about 10 people worked together to finish nailing down the bamboo floor.  It was a great way to finish off the project as we were all working together to get the job done. 

The group was standing around celebrating their accomplishments when we were asked to meet in front of one of the homes we had completed.  We walked down the road and were pleasantly surprised to see that all the new homeowners and their families had converged to offer us their collective thanks.  A few words of thanks were exchanged through a translator by both groups and then we offered each new homeowner a blanket as a housewarming gift for their new home.  If there was a moment when one may have been moved to tears, this was it.

Large group and small group photos were taken,  many exchanges of, 'ah-kuhn' or thank you were made and it was then time to get into our vans and leave.  And as  muted and reserved as our welcome to the village was, our departure was enthusiastic and heartfelt.  Children and adults all down the road bade us farewell and their smiles left us with the feeling that our efforts had helped to make a difference.

At dinner that evening we exchanged stories and showed each other the blisters, scrapes and cuts we  had as souvenirs of our day.  We went to bed that night wondering what the following day would be like at the PIO school.

The following morning we made our way to the People's Improvement Organization (PIO) school  in Borei Santipheap II, which is an area on the outskirts of  Phnom Penh.  It is a settlement area for many of the displaced people of the riverside slum, who were forced out of the city centre by developers.  We arrived at the school and were greeted enthusiastically by the students, many of whom were wearing old, previously donated school uniforms from CIS.

Thanks to donations organized through PIO founder and CNN hero Phymean Noun , the school is  expanding by four classrooms and so we donated the paint and were going to paint the new rooms. The change of pace from hammering to painting was welcomed by all as there were some pretty stiff muscles following the previous days work.

 The students not only welcomed us, they actually delivered our painting supplies!

And then, it got interesting.  We got ourselves organized, opened up our paint and got down to work.   The next we know, all the kids who greeted us had grabbed paint brushes and were proceeding to help us.   Picture kids as young as 4 and 5 years old randomly painting stuff, the walls, themselves, and you might be able to conjure up a picture of what it was like. In a word it was.......chaos.  But, the kids were eager to help and we were only to happy to have them give us a hand to paint their school.  They were proud of  themselves for helping and we, although a little frustrated at times, were thankful for their help.  It gave our job purpose.  We weren't just painting a building.  We were painting a school. THEIR school.

At the beginning of the day, most of us felt that a day of painting would be much easier than our day of housebuilding the day before, but boy, were we wrong. The walls were 20+ ft. high and we were painting both the interior and the exterior of the building.  The walls were bare concrete, so we spent the entire morning just applying a primer.  Over the lunch hour, we looked at the work we had in front of us and didn't think we would ever get done.  But, thankfully the top coat went on very well and covered very well and we only had to apply one coat.  Both the team working inside the school and the team working outside the school saw instant progress and there was no second guessing what had been painted as the exterior colour was lime green and the interior colour was a yellow brighter than the sun!!  We were a little leery of the colours when we first got started, by the time we finished, we all agreed it looked great.

At the end of the day we were quite proud of the work we had done, all of which was christened when a few of the workers put up the school sign.  The place looked great and thanks to a very large community effort, we got the job done.   

That evening everyone got together for a 'victory' dinner of sorts where we swapped stories, congratulated each other on a job well done and began minor discussions about doing it all next year!

The following morning some of the group boarded a bus and headed for the airport to go home.  While others, including Haylee, Lisa and myself prepared for our trip to Siem Reap Province and the ancient temples of Angkor Wat.

See my next post for more about our experiences in Siem Reap...

5 posts and counting!

Blog Post - House Hunting is now available  

I'm still working in reverse and catching up to the present, so you will find the post listed in the Blog Archive under 2010 - September or you can go to it directly following the House Hunting Link.

Previously on Survivor...

Created my first two posts for this blog when we first arrived in Singapore in August '10 and then got busy settling in, starting a new job, getting a place to live etc.   Consequently, the blog got put on the back burner for a while. Okay, a long while.  But, I've recently been inspired by an e-mail I received from a good friend, Rob Turnbull, in which he shared his blog with me. His most recent entry highlighted  a recent trip that he and his family had taken to Belize.  It convinced me it was time to update my blog, so here I go.   If you want to get the picture here, start with my first post and read the entries in reverse order to understand the chronology of our time and experiences in Singapore.  The posts are arranged according to date (year-month) on the right side of this page.  

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year was in February this year and it gave us 2 days off work and a four day weekend.  So, we made plans to go back to Phuket, Thailand with Charlie and Ruth.  We really enjoyed ourselves the first time we were here and were looking forward to our return trip.  Unlike the last time we visited, when we stayed on the west coast near Patong, this time we stayed on the east coast near Phuket Town.  The hotel we picked was the Westin Siray Bay, a new hotel that opened just a few months earlier.  Built on a hillside overlooking the water and a beautiful beach, we were immediately impressed.

After enjoying a welcome drink in the lobby we made our way to our rooms, which thanks to the rather steep hillside, we negotiated by golf cart.  Our room overlooked the water and also had an overhead view of one of the pools which was located directly below our room.  After leaving our bags in our room,  we made our way up to the highest point on the property, where we enjoyed a nice lunch and went swimming in the glass sided infinity pool.  And talk about hot!   If we were craving the sun and the heat, we certainly found it.

We spent the next couple of days lazing around the hotel  and enjoying all the amenities it had to offer.  Lisa and I would use the gym each morning and then we would spend the afternoons lounging at one of the two pools or we would head down to the beach.   At the beach, we went kayaking and I did some windsurfing.

After that we napped in hammocks.  What a rough life!  

After enjoying the delicious, but expensive hotel food, we decided to go into Phuket Town for dinner each night.  Although somewhat intimidated by the hustle and bustle on the streets, we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless and found some good places to eat.  We also did a little bit of shopping at a local mall and bought some stuff from street vendors who were selling knockoffs of most designer brands including Gucci, Coach, Polo, Lacoste and Quicksilver to name but a few.

Next, we set our eyes on adventure.   Off the east coast of Phuket are a group of islands known as the Phi Phi (pronounced Pee-Pee) Islands,  a group of towering limestone islands that are world renowned for their beauty and as a destination for snorkeling and scuba diving.  We planned a day long excursion out to the islands for a tour of some of the various islands and to do some swimming and snorkeling.  It was the highlight of the trip and I daresay the highlight of all of the experiences we have had here in south-east Asia.  Being out on the crystal clear water in the beautiful sunshine among the islands was truly awe inspiring.

We packed an awful lot into our four day trip and enjoyed our time in Phuket tremendously.   There were beautiful sunsets each night that proved to be the perfect photo op.   In fact, there were so many great photo ops that we took over 250 pics during our short trip.  Check 'em out and we're sure you'll agree that they were all worthwhile.  

Thanks to Charlie and Ruth for the visit and thank you Phuket!

Visitors

We were excited to hear Charlie and Ruth would be coming to visit us in Singapore.  They would be our first visitors and we were quite excited to show them around Singapore.  We would have plenty of time to do it as they would be spending a couple of months with us. 

The trip got off to an interesting start.  Ruth and Charlie were arriving  a couple of days after New Year's at about 5:00 a.m.  Coincidentally, we arrived home from Bali about 6 hours earlier at 11: 00 p.m.  So, instead of going home just in time to return to meet them, we decided to sleep in the airport terminal.  What a mistake.  We couldn't find anywhere comfortable to sleep and once we did, they started doing some renovations on the airport and we had to listen to a jack-hammer all night long.  So. by the time Charlie and Ruth got off the airplane, it was hard to tell who was more tired!   The funniest part of our meeting was seeing Charlie, who arrived in the 30+ degree heat of Singapore dressed looking like the abominable snow man!  I guess he didn't want to wear a winter coat to the airport when he left Saint John so instead, he wore several layers of shirts and sweaters.   That was all well and good but for reasons that no one still quite understands, he wore them on the plane to Toronto, then to Beijing where they spent an entire day on a layover and finally on to Singapore some 36 hours later!  What a guy!

The first thing we did was celebrate Christmas together.  Thanks to a note Haylee had sent to Santa, we had conveniently arranged for the Big Guy to visit us in Singapore in January.  So, on Christmas morning, which was actually about the 5th of January, we awoke to find presents under the tree.  Haylee was quite excited when she received an iPod Touch!

We decided to keep the celebrations going, so the next thing we celebrated was Haylee and Lisa's birthdays, which were in October!  Charlie and Ruth brought a birthday cake from New Brunswick ( Lisa and Haylee's favorite kind) and we enjoyed some good Canadian pound cake with vanilla butter icing.

We had a couple of days to show them around Singapore before we had to return to work, so we did some sightseeing and familiarized them with the public transit system so they could find their way around without us.

We visited some of our favorite places with them like Sentosa, an integrated resort area which is actually a large island (kinda like Toronto Island but with palm trees).  There's a zip line on Sentosa that we had all seen when we were watching the Amazing Race on T.V. back in Canada before we moved to Singapore.

 We had all decided that was something we wanted to do together and we couldn't wait to give it a try. We  made our way up to the departure point and our nervous excitement about our big adventure, turned into a bit of fear once we saw how high up it was.  Lisa, Haylee and myself had done it once before, so we knew what to expect, but Charlie and Ruth were a little more uncertain.  But they were troopers and committed to doing it and took off down the zip line without hesitation......and they loved it!  So, did we!  It was a great experience to do together.

What followed over the next two months was one great experience after another.  Of course, our big adventures tended to be on the weekends while during the week, Charlie and Ruth would preoccupy themselves by doing a little sightseeing, going to the casino, going to the driving range, going to the casino, shopping and going to the casino.   Does someone have a problem?  Don't think so, as they only stayed long enough for Charlie to lose his allocated amount and for Ruth to win it back and then some.  Ruth holds her hand pretty close to the vest, so we're not exactly sure how much money she won, but it's rumored that it may have been enough to pay for their trip to Florida a few months later? But, alas, we'll never know :)

Other highlights of our time together in Singapore included visits to the Jurong Bird Park, the Fish Spa and Underwater World, where Charlie and Haylee went swimming with dolphins! 

We also had time for yet another party when we celebrated Ruth and Charlie's wedding anniversary.

We had a great time together and saw and did a lot of great things together including taking a trip to Phuket together.  Remember how we said we wanted to go back to Phuket?  Well, we got an opportunity to do so sooner than we thought when we spent 4 days there over the Chinese New Year in February.  You can learn more about that experience in a separate post.

When the day came to say goodbye to Ruth and Charlie we were sad to see them go.  We hoped that they enjoyed their time with us and looked forward to seeing them back in Canada in July!

Bali - The Last Paradise

Bali - it conjures up images of the last paradise. True to form, our experiences there were nothing short of out of this world.....

We were looking for a memorable Christmas in our first year in Singapore and it didn't take us long to choose Bali. 12 years earlier, when we were living in Japan, we had spent the New Year's holiday in Singapore and Bali. It was that experience that ultimately brought us back to Singapore for work and to Bali for a second time.


In planning the trip, we had to decide where to stay. Bali is a pretty big island with all types of different experiences, depending on where you stay. In our first trip here, we had stayed in a resort area called Nusa Dua which was beautiful but didn't give us much of a feel of what Bali was 'really' like. So we were looking for another locale.


Our choices:

Kuta - party central, home to all the nightlife and also where the Bali nightclub bombings took place.
Legian/Seminyak- up the coast from Kuta and the 'in' place to stay. Tends to be costly.
Ubud- the artistic heart of Bali in a mountainous region in the interior of Bali.  Also where the part of the book is based
Ahmed and Candi Dasa - a quite area on the eastern side of the island known more for its diving
Tanah Lot -  pounding surf, on the western side of the island, away from the hustle and bustle and home to the most visited of all Balinese temples.

We thought about splitting our time between two  different locations, but ultimately decided to stay in Tanah Lot at the Bali Nirwana Resort. 

We arrived at night and were immediately impressed.  The place has a Greg Norman designed golf course and so after you exit off of the main road you meander for app. 1 km through the golf course to the resort.  About one-third of the way in, there is a guard house where the undercarriage of all vehicles is inspected using a mirror to ensure there are no bombs.  This was a bit of an eye-opener for us, but understandable based on past events in Bali.

Got to our rooms around 1:00 a.m., fell asleep and woke up the next day to a beautiful, sprawling resort centred around a series of interconnected lagoons, complete with a waterfall.  And just when Haylee didn't think it could get any better,  she discovered.....the waterslide!  Many hours of the day were spent doing up and down the slide with her new found friends Greta, Jack, Ally and Maddy.  Greta and Jack are from Melbourne and we became friends with  their parents and spent a lot of time together.  Ally and Maddy are living in Hong Kong by way of London and the Phillipines.



We were looking for some unique opportunities during our stay and selected a few things that we felt would be both memorable and enjoyable.  Our first adventure was to go horseback riding. Getting anywhere in Bali is a slow process, so we chose a place that was close to our hotel. We weren't disappointed with our choice as we had a great afternoon riding on the black sand beaches and exploring a beautiful Balinese village. A couple of times during our trip we were given a bit of a scare. The first one came when someone set off fireworks in the village we were riding through. As you might imagine, this spooked the horses and scared us too. The final incident happened when we were almost finished. A group of local kids was playing a game of soccer and as we approached the game, the horses became increasingly uneasy. It turns out, one time a kid had kicked a soccer ball and hit a horse and now the horses were fearful of it happening again. Just as we got close, the loud 'thud' of a foot kicking the ball could be heard and this terrified Lisa's horse, which we were to find out later, was the one that had been hit in the incident I described earlier. Lisa held on for dear life and thankfully settled the horse down. So, as advertised, our horseback riding certainly proved to be adventurous (and a little harrowing too).

Happy Bike Tour

A second, highly recommended excursion we went on was a day long cycling trip in Central Bali with a group known as Happy Bike Tours.  Our first stop of the day was to a coffee plantation in the foothills of  Mt. Agung, a volcanic mountain.  We saw vanilla plants and cinnamon trees and how a specialty coffee called Kopi Lumak is made.  One of the most expensive coffees in the world,  Kopi Lumak or Civet Coffee is made by feeding coffee beans to a civet, who digests them and then defecates the coffee bean.  The beans are then collected from the feces of the civet, cleaned, and dried in the sun.  I kid you not!  Needless to say, we took a pass on the offer to try a drink.

 

Next, we went for breakfast at a restaurant that overlooked the volcanic mountains of Mt. Agung and Mt. Batur and a lake that separated the two.  It was incredibly picturesque and we took many great photos here.

After breakfast we began our bike tour.   Peddling the back roads of Bali through rice paddies and villages and alongside mountain streams and river valleys, the downhill ride was full of the beauty and imagery that many people envision when they hear of Bali being the "Last Paradise on Earth".

Riding through beautiful mountain villages, we were happily greeted by everyone we passed and what we saw was a way of life that has been untouched by consumerism and the modern ways of life.  Recently harvested rice was laid out on tarps by the side of the road to dry in the hot sun, people carried home fresh fruits in baskets on the tops of their heads and children played merrily in the streets.

 See what it was like for yourself....

After hours of riding through the countryside and enjoying every minute of it, we visited the family compound of the tour operator where we were treated to a traditional Balinese lunch and learned about family life in Bali.

It was the most incredible experience and something we would certainly do again were we to return to Bali.

Christmas in the Tropics

Celebrating Christmas away from family and friends and without snow was a little different, but our Christmas and New Year's proved to be quite memorable.  The hotel was decorated for the season and featured a massive gingerbread cathedral in the lobby.  The restaurant had a large Christmas tree and had a Santa and his reindeer suspended overhead.  On Christmas Eve, we went to a special dinner which featured a children's choir from the local orphanage.

We made our own Christmas tree using the branches of a tropical plant and decorated it with flowers.  Our haul of Christmas gifts was a little light as we had instructed Santa to visit our place in Singapore after the holidays so that we would celebrate Christmas with Charlie and Ruth when they arrived in early January.


 New Year's was a good time too.  We had met two other families during our stay and went out for dinner with them at the hotel pub and restaurant.  After a late meal, we went next door to the conference centre for a countdown to midnight that couldn't be beat.  There was live music, free champagne and decorations and party favors galore.  Haylee and her new found friends spent the rest of the night on stage singing and dancing to the music with their own microphone!

 Seminyak

A couple of  evenings during our trip we travelled to Seminyak, a popular restaurant area where we  found an Italian restaurant called Ultimo that we fell in love with.  The food was spectacular and the prices couldn't be beat and the atmosphere was pretty cool too.

Kuta

As I said earlier, Kuta Beach is a bit of a tourist trap that is popular with western tourists and is infamously known as the site of the Bali bombings that took place in 2002 and 2005.  As a result, it's an area that we were somewhat hesitant to visit.  Nonetheless,  we ventured there one day and had a good time here enjoying a Starbucks coffee, doing some shopping and visiting Waterbom water park. All three of us had a great time at the water park and spent the whole day going up and down the waterslides.  Even a torrential tropical downpour didn't slow us down. Running and playing in the rain was great fun and made us feel like kids again ( Haylee didn't have to work too hard at this ).  We finished off a great day in Kuta by enjoying dinner on the beach before returning to our hotel.

Golf

The Bali Nirwana Golf Club surrounds the resort and has some of the most picturesque golf holes I have ever seen.  There are three holes that play right along the ocean, one of which is a 200 yard par three with a 180 yard carry over the water.  In the background, you can see the Tanah Lot temple which is one of the most visited temples in Bali.  I played the course two times during our stay and just loved it.  I would definitely like to play this course again sometime.

The opportunity to spend 2+ weeks in Bali was an incredible experience and what some would call the trip of a lifetime.  Fun, food, new found friends...who could ask for anything more?