Hello Everyone,
We are “Back on the Road Again.” This time to Cambodia and Vietnam.
After almost 20 years, we are headed back to Cambodia. We last visited there in late 2004 with a group called “Global Exchange.” They sponsor “Reality Tours”, exposing their participants to local culture and socioeconomic issues, as well as the typical tourist sights. At that time Carol was doing a story for the Seattle Times about them and their tours.
The leader of our tour was a woman named Bhavia Wagner. She had written books about Cambodia and founded an NGO [non-government organization] called Friendship with Cambodia [FWC]. FWC at the time was sponsoring the education of young students that had potential, but no opportunities, because their families needed them to work on the family farm. FWC would give their families a small stipend to replace the child’s farm labor, pay for the schooling and provide a local social worker to follow up with the child and family over time. We met the first 6 students that were to be sponsored while we were in Cambodia with Bhavia.
Because of the high value of the US Dollar, all this could be done with a surprisingly small amount money in “Dollars.” When we returned to Seattle we decided to sponsor one of those first students. After the first one graduated we continued sponsoring others over the years, as well as FWC in other ways. Last year FWC celebrated their 20th year helping out in Cambodia. After 21 years FWC has created a self repeating system of Cambodians who help their families and others after they benefited from their experience with FWC.
Later this week we will return to Cambodia, see how things in that country have progressed and meet some of the students that we sponsored, now contributing members of the Cambodian society. I’m sure we’ll find some time for various tourist activities, including an unusual thing or two, all of which we hope to tell you about, as we go, in our Travelogs and Blogs.
We will be in Cambodia for about 10 days and then fly to Hanoi, Vietnam for about a week, with a side trip to Halong Bay, something we missed in 2007, when we last visited Hanoi.
Stay tuned and we’ll try to take you along for the ride, assuming the Internet is a little better than it was on our first visit 20 years ago. “Those Were the Days….crashing cafe computers, slow, unreliable Internet and very limited mobile phone service!”
Carol has already finished her first blog entry, where she explains in much more detail about FWC and what we expect to see and do there. Take a look here if you would like to read more:
https://carolapucci-tips.blogspot.com/2024/02/touching-soul-of-cambodia-reason-to.html
Later…….. your favorite travelers, Tom and Carol
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