Cambodia Trip Day 10

Our final day in Cambodia and we toured the National museum, Royal palace and Silver Pagoda. We then spent the afternoon at still more markets bargaining and shopping before an overnight flight home to Melbourne. All students and teachers in tact! Such an incredible trip so different to anything I have ever seen before. What a beautiful and interesting country that has experienced so much history and difficulty.

Cambodia Trip Day 9

A somber day today as we visited the Toul Sleng museum of genocidal crimes and the Killing Fields of ChoeungEk. A number of us shed tears as we were moved by the stories of the atrocities suffered at these sites. The tree where children were beaten and killed broke my heart, and the number of bones kept in the mausoleum was overwhelming. We met one of the survivors of Toul Sleng and purchased his book. It was a lot to take in, and we spent some down time afterwards at the pool and then took a cruise on the Mekong river to gain some pep and happiness back in our steps. 

Cambodia Trip Day 8

 We spent today at the Free the Bears Sanctuary doing their keeper for a day program where we made enrichment toys for the bears and threw them in to see them enjoy! Back in Australia it was grand final day in the AFL and we got regular updates from my Dad back home to keep the kids in the loop!

Phnom Penh Sunset

Tour Guide Mak

Cambodia traffic!

View from breakfast roof of hotel

Cambodia Trip Day 7

Today started with a blessing from a Buddhist monk who tied a red string around my wrist for good energy. Then we explored the temples of Banteay Srey and Mebon before putting 22 tired teenagers on a flight to Phnom Penh and checking them into the new hotel. Not as fun as the roof top pool in Siem Reap, but pretty amazing just the same!  

Cambodia Trip Days 4-6

The next 3 days were spent at a local community school called Treak Community Centre.  The staff here were welcoming and friendly, and students and teachers alike we spent time with the students of the school, playing, teaching, helping build bricks for further buildings and development and so on. It was such a great community service component of the trip for the students, who saw how others live, so differently from their own privileged, private school lives. This was poverty, extreme poverty in many cases, and walking through the village back to the bus was fascinating, seeing beyond the tourism to real Cambodian life. 

In the evenings we spent a fair amount of time shopping and bargaining at the night markets, eating amazing Cambodian fare, and on one night, we went to the PHARE circus - such a treat! The circus is made up of performers who use theater, music, dance and modern circus arts to tell uniquely Cambodian stories; historical, folk and modern. It was a highlight of the trip for many of us. 

At one of the markets we found some unusual street food. I ate scorpion, tarantula and snake, as did many of the students. It was strange - tarantula leg was SO chewy - I could not eat an abdomen though. The snake had tiny bones that got caught in the teeth, and the scorpion was crunchy and yum! 

Cambodia Trip Day 2

Today we experienced the phenomenal Angkor Wat Temples. There is a reason these are one of the seven wonders of the world, and we spent a day exploring a number of different temples, including climbing the main site. Our guide Nak was super knowledgeable about the sites and the history here is just incredible. 

In the evening, we attended the Aspara Dance Show, which was pretty cool. It was a sit down dinner with a Cabaret style show featuring dance and sing that told stories of traditional Cambodian tales. It was a fun night, I think my fave was the crickets dance! 

Cambodia. Day 1 - depart for Siem Reap and Angkor museum

This trip was a school trip with work, which means I give up time and follow the schedule and am responsible for teenagers 24/7, however the costs are covered for me aside from spending money.

Late night flight with 22 excited teens and 3 staff. We got them all checked in and through security, twice because of the Bangkok stop over... And we landed in Siem Reap early in the morning local time. Straight to the hotel for a quick shower and bag drop and then we headed out with our amazing guide, Nak, to the Angkor museum. I think my favourite story was understanding the tale of Naga and Buddha, since that was the depiction in so many buddha statues.

Naga, in Hinduism and Buddhism, is the Sanskrit word for a deity taking the form of a great snake, specifically the multi-headed king cobra. The traditions about nagas are common in all the Buddhist countries in Asia. In many countries, the concept of naga has merged with local traditions of many great and wise serpents. The Buddhist naga has the form of a great cobra, usually depicted with a single head but sometimes with many heads. The naga which is seen sheltering the Buddha while meditating is known as Mucilanda. Mucilanda is believed to have protected the Buddha from the elements like rain and storm after he attained enlightenment. It is said that the four weeks after the Buddha began meditating under the Bodhi tree, the heavens darkened for seven days, a heavy rainfall started. The mighty king of the serpents, Mucilanda then is believed to have emerged from beneath the earth and protected the Buddha with his hood as the Buddha is considered the source of all protection. When the storm stopped, the serpent king Mucilanda assumed his human form, bowed before the Buddha and returned to his palace in joy. The iconographic representation of this Buddhist folklore is known as the Naga Buddha statues. These artistic representations of the Buddha meditating under the protection of Mucalinda are common in many Buddhist countries which are famous for their unique Buddhist arts

After the museum, we went to lunch where we ordered our own meals - a rarity since most meals were set menus. Fresh juices were amazing!

After lunch we had some time back at the hotel for a swim and cool down before we took a walking tour of Siem Reap with the guide who showed us Pub Street and a couple of great night markets. I purchased nothing but a fan which turned out to be the Best Buy of my trip. I only paid $1USD and by the end of it, had I known how much use it would get, I would easily have paid 15! The country is so hot, all of the time. It is humid and sticky and all of us were non stop sweating the entire trip. Ew.