Hello Everyone,
Our 23 hour journey to Phnom Penh was “mostly” uneventful, 13 hours to a short layover in Seoul, South Korea and then 6 more hours in the air to Phnon Penh. While waiting for our flight in Seoul we had lunch at the Priority Pass lounge. That day’s feature presentation was “American Corn Dogs.” Figuring that this might be my last chance for some good old American food, for a while, I decided to “ chow down” on them. They actually tasted pretty authentic. However, the “corn silk” tea, served with them, tasted like you would expect, if you can imagine what corn silk taste like. The Korean Air flight from Soul to Phnom Penh was comfortable enough to get a little “shut-eye” on the way. One thing of note is that there was a cup full of free tooth brushes in the airplane lavatories. I have not seen this before. They must consider oral hygiene important in their culture.
Often, when we arrive in a strange city, especially late at night, we will have our hotel arrange for us a private taxi to take us to the hotel. As we walk out of the security area at the airport, the driver will be standing there with a sign that has our name on it. We follow him to his car, hop in and he takes us to our hotel. “Easy Peasy”, right? Well, usually. This time he was supposed to take us to the Pavilion Hotel. Instead, for some unknown reason, he dropped us at the Plantation Hotel! Not realizing the mistake, Carol was trying to figure out why the receptionist didn’t have our reservation. Suddenly it occurred to me that we were at the WRONG HOTEL. It is now 11:30 PM, our driver was gone and we were in the wrong hotel! Hummm……… as it turned out, the Pavilion Hotel was only a half mile down the street. The receptionist helped us arrange a Tuk-tuk [an open air wagon pulled by an attached motorcycle] to take us the last half mile to start our new adventure in Cambodia.
We arrived on the day of the Chinese Lunar New Year [The Year of the Dragon], but it was so late that all the festivities were already over. However, in our room, on the bed were two small red envelopes. Each contained a 100 Cambodian Riel note. This money was only worth two and a half cents [$.025] but the real value to us is that it will bring us a whole year of good luck…… priceless. Also in the room was a plate of small bananas and a new fruit I had never tasted, the Mangosteen. It’s the size of a large dark purple plum with a collar. Inside is a center of several white pouches filled with a sweet liquid and surrounded by a thick red husk. The pouches are very tasty.
As I mentioned in the previous posting, it has been almost 20 years since we visited Cambodia. In October of 2004, we went there with a small group of tourists [12 people], on a “reality tour”, sponsored by Global Exchange. Carol was writing a story about reality tours for The Seattle Times. These tours combine some typical tourism [seeing the sights] with a look below the surface to meet real local people and see how they live their lives. The leader of our tour was a woman named Bhavia Wagner. In addition to doing things like seeing the amazing temples of Siem Reap and boating along the Mekong River & lake Tonle Sap, we saw things like how rural poor people were trained by local NGOs [Non-Government Organizations] to work in restaurants and how they were dealing with injuries resulting from land mines and unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam War. It was both an interesting and sobering reality. Toward the end of our tour, we visited 6 young children in their homes, on rural farms. They were the first 6 students that Bhavia, her Cambodian connections and her newly formed NGO, Friendship With Cambodia [FWC], had chosen to support their education. Their parents, poor farmers, had no money to pay for education and also needed these children to work on the farm. FWC [through donors in the USA] would pay for the education, financially support the families to replace the child’s labor and provide social workers in Cambodia to support the children while they were going to school. We were so impressed with how much good FWC could do with such a small amount of American dollars, that we decided to support the education of one of the children we met. And now, 20 years later, after supporting 6 students, we decided to return to Cambodia, with Bhavia, to meet some of the them [now contributing adults] on our own “reality tour.”
The first day here we summoned a “Grab” car [that operates like a local Uber] to take us to the home of Kosal, the local manager of Holt, an NGO that handles the Cambodian side of the FWC student education program. We met her family and enjoyed a delicious Cambodian meal. Kasol has a 4 year old grandson who can speak perfect English, that he learned from watching cartoons on YouTube. Wow! The world has really shrunk so much when a Cambodian child can learn English by watching American cartoons on YouTube. The next day we grabbed another Grab car, to take us to the local office of Holt. FWC students meet here on Sundays to support each other, make presentations to the group about things they are working on and socialize a bit. Today’s program was about the dramatic increase in injuries and deaths from cars, motorcycles and other forms of transportation in the streets. While we were there we met 15 current students and a few FWC alumni attending. One of these students was Chanminea, 19, the student we are currently sponsoring. She is entering her third year in nursing school. We couldn’t be more proud of her success. After the presentations several students presented how they are helping in their communities. Things like teaching pre-school children how to brush their teeth, wash their hands and how to read books, and showing adults how to manage money. A 30 year old Alumnus spoke to the these students motivating them to not give up and work hard to achieve their goals. She was small, and not so great at farming with her family, so she knew that her only hope was education. These young women are told that they should be someone’s wife and not have educational ambitions. They are often fighting discouragement as they work to get educated. Her parents were not so encouraging, but now that she has become successful, her parents are now encouraging their grandchildren to go to school. These children are from very poor rural families and they realize that education is the way they can improve their lives. They work hard for many years to achieve it. FWC has supported the education of hundreds of children [about 85% young women] in its 20 year history.
The temperature got up to 97° F today in Phnom Penh. The traffic is often terrible. Twenty years ago, there were mostly bicycles, some motorcycles and a rare car traveling the streets. The flow moved at the speed of bicycles and motorbikes. The traffic moved like schools of fish, barely missing but never touching each other. There was very little traffic control at intersections, but cross traffic could get past each other just by moving slowly and avoiding each other. Now, there is still little traffic control with mostly motorbikes and cars on the streets. Most of them try to move slowly, but some speed, making it dangerous for everyone. Thus the increase in traffic injuries. Just crossing the street is much more dangerous than it was in 2004. We were told that the best advice for crossing the street is to “smile and make eye contact with the vehicle driver”, then, move slowly across and let the vehicles move around you. Oh, and don’t make any sudden movements. It’s a bit scary but seems to work.
A special event for us was to meet Sean Sok-Ny. She was our second student from 2010 to 2014. Now, 37 years old with a husband and 3 children, she graduated from the National University of Management in Phnom Penh. When she was in grade school she rode with a friend to school on one bicycle. Now she takes her 3 children to school, all together on her motorbike. After working for a while as project officer for the Cambodia Indigenous Peoples Organization, she now freelances, volunteers and raises money for Indigenous causes online through a YouTube channel featuring songs she writes and sings with a small group. She and her husband, a motorcycle repairman with his own business, are doing well enough to send their children to private school. If you are interested, Carol has more detail about the students and FWC in her blog referenced below.
There are tall buildings and sky scrapers popping up everywhere in Phnom Penh. From a walking tour in the city we learned that 70% of them are Chinese owned and some others are Korean owned. Most of them are only 20% to 30% occupied. Many of them are only partially built and abandoned due to financial issues with the Chinese backers. Corruption still seems to rule the government here, but the people continue to struggle to succeed.
Next we’re off to Kampot, to visit another NGO supported by FWC and take a cooking class at a famous Pepper plantation, among other things. Stay tuned…….
Check out the photos at right. Some things are better told in pictures:
And, you read Carol’s blog about our trip here:
https://carolapucci-tips.blogspot.com/2024/02/how-education-is-spawning-new.html?m=1
Later, your favorite travelers, Tom and Carol
Phnom Penh Photos
Click to Enlarge and Read Caption
