Cambodia

I'm back. Did you miss me?

Cambodia is an interesting place. We flew in to Phnom Penh (the capital) on the afternoon of the 20th after a 1 night layover in Malaysia. We took off from there straight to Sihanoukville which is a city on the coast. The first things I noticed were how much people use motorcycles in Cambodia and that they drive on the same side of the road as Americans. It was also very obvious how few people live in Cambodia as compared to Bangladesh. I just looked up the numbers and it appears that about 15 million people live in Cambodia. That is just slightly more than the number of people who live in Dhaka alone. Cambodia is also slightly bigger than Bangladesh.

Our bus broke down on the way to Sihanoukville and so we had to wait 2 hours for another one to come get us. Andy and Lana (the leaders of MCC in Cambodia) joked with us about the fact that none of us even came close to complaining about this inconvenience. The said that we would probably have complained if things had actually gone as planned. What ended up happening was that once Daniel realized that there were Mangoes outside at the stands he went out and started bartering despite the fact that he didn't know the language or have any local currency. Somehow he still managed to work out a good deal and got some money from Any and Lana. Then of course he wanted to eat it but didn't have a knife. Luckily the shop people were really nice and cut it up for him. We ended up exchanging some language lessons with them before they brought us some chairs to sit in. We then spent the next bit of time chatting and enjoying the evening.

The next 4 days or so were spent at the Orchidee Guest House. The days started out with a continental breakfast at the guest house. This is complete with fresh baked bread every morning. That's a good way to start the morning. We followed that up with a worship time led by Nate. We then finished off the mornings with Andy and Lana leading us in a journey of reflection and learning. We talked about what experiences have shaped us and made us who we are. Then we talked about our Myers-Briggs types. This lead into how we deal with each other and how we deal with our environment around us. It was very helpful but also led us to some challenging questions. We followed up those sessions with a lunch of traditional Cambodian food. It turns out that Cambodians don't use much spice in their foods. Instead they tend to have a lot of fruit flavorings. Lots of lemon, pineapple, and coconut. This is mixed in with a variety of meats like pork, chicken, and all sorts of fish. I thought it was all pretty good but actually prefer spicy foods to fruity foods. In the afternoons we had free time to do as we please. For me this meant a trip to the market, kayaking, snorkeling around a coral reef, and some frisbee on the beach. Then each evening we got together for supper at local restaurants. We varied the foods up and had things like grilled seafood, pancakes, and local cuisine. The pancakes were absolutely amazing. Supper would usually last a couple of hours due to chatting and then we would all go back and hang out at the hotel for a bit before bed.

Finally we returned to Phnom Penh to see the MCC office and meet the staff. We had lunch with all the expats working in Cambodia. One of the older workers was a guy I took one look at and just knew he had to be from central Illinios. There was something about his ears and facial structure that I recognized. Of course I was right. He had even gone to Bluffton as well where he met his wife who was from Pandora, OH. After lunch we went to visit some of MCC Cambodia's handicrafts partners and a local marketplace. I bought some gifts for some people but I won't ruin the surprise by saying who or what. That evening we had supper at a nice Cambodian restaurant which served the meal in courses. They had a very interesting tea which I'll probably post a picture of me drinking later (it looks like I've got something other than tea but I promise you it is only tea).

The next day a group of us went to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. I would rate that experience as even more of a gut check than the Holocaust museum in Washington DC was. I think the thing that put it over the top was the fact that our guide talked about how half her family was killed before she and her mother escaped to a refugee camp in Vietnam. This combined with their brutal methods was pretty intense. You can read a general talk about what happened here.

After the museum trip we all got drenched by a thunderstorm. We then had lunch at Andy and Lana's house before we broke up and went our separate ways. For me this meant that I began my journey back to Bangladesh.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trip. It was my first time outside of the Bangladesh, India, Nepal region in 17 months. It was interesting to get a glimpse of western culture and how I'll respond to it when I travel to the states next month. I have developed some habits in Bangladesh and they are amusing to combat in certain situations. I'll try to follow this up with some stories of individual events that happened on the trip but won't promise that I get around to it.