Secret Elephants and Sneaky Crocodiles

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By this time, you've probably re-read the title of this blog twice and thought to yourself, "what on Earth is she on about?" I promise I will reveal it later in this entry!

Last night we went to a semi-concert/lecture by a man known as 'Beatacello'. His real name is Dr Beat Richner, and his story of building hospitals in Cambodia. He is an older Swiss man, who is very talented at playing the cello - such a magnificent instrument! In his show, he played the cello for us, and also explained about the construction of his five hospitals in Cambodia. His hospitals are free for all Cambodian children, and it was just so inspiring. To see this one man, who had a dream of saving the children - dreams really can come true. Dr Beat does shows every Thursday and Saturday in Siem Reap in the hope for donations for his hospital. He was explaining how $240 is the cost of an average hospitalisation, and how hard it was to raise funds for a free hospital. His shows bring in a crazy $5 million a year, though this is not nearly enough. It really shocked me to read in the news a couple of days ago, that a Malaysian businessman recently spent $4.8 BILLION on a gold yacht. Instead of spending this ridiculous amount on a boat, he could have saved 200 million Cambodian children's lives... really makes you questions how the world is still possiblly functioning like this.

This morning was an extra treat - I got to sleep in till 10:30am! Amy had told us that we were going to a cooking class today, so no lunch for us! After a quick breakfast, we rode into the town and across the bridge. Here, we witnessed poverty in great numbers. It was heart breaking to see people living on the side of polluted river in tin huts... people scavenging through the rubbish looking for anything to eat or sell. It was a real wake up call on how lucky we are, I feel so strongly about this! As we rode back to the town, we passed a sign that said "mini Angkor Wat Temple". Intrigued, we rode down the side street until we reached a small courtyard, where we were greeted by a woman. Paying $1.50 each, we stepped into this beautiful space, where someone had hand crafted three magnificent temples out of stone/concrete... it must have taken years. After lots of photos were taken and "ahhing" and "oooing" was finished, we were nearly ready to go when the woman said 'crocodile?'. Puzzled, we followed her into the back of the house, where there was a concrete step up that was met with a fence. She told us to get onto the step, and looking over that fence was the biggest surprise to us all....

THERE WERE SIXTY CROCODILES! Not concrete or carved, these were living, breathing animals, all crammed into the space of an average bedroom. In the middle of the animals was a pool of murky water, where yellow eyes peeked out at us curiously. None of us had been expecting these crocodiles, and it was a real shock. Clearly, anything like this in Australia is illegal... in Cambodia I'm not too sure. I felt so sad for the crocodiles, as not far from this house was a shop that boasted of selling crocodile leather handbags and so on...

Leaving that scary place, we made our way to the 'Temple Bar', where our Khmer cooking class was held. Stomachs rumbling and tummies growling, we began our cooking, with each of the girls cooking a different starter, main and dessert. Mum you'd be proud - I managed to cook fresh rice paper rolls, Khmer curry and a banana dessert that all tasted really good! Anyone that knows me properly, knows I am a horrible cook... maybe I'll move to Cambodia and become a Khmer cook NOT! We indulged in our delicious meals, and left the Temple Bar feeling like stuffed turkeys!

Finally, we got back to Earthwalkers on our bicycles (may I mention we rode ALL DAY!) and sat down and had some self-time. After relaxing and talking to loved ones, we got ready for the Bayon 1 restaraunt. Catching a tuk-tuk there, we were seated right in front of the shadow puppets - an act the restaraunt is known for. Personally, I don't know if it was known for positive or negative ratings. All us girls found it hilarious that they weren't in english, and we filled in the voices with our own stories... which I won't mention on here just in case young people are reading! We then went to my favourite place, "the Blue Pumpkin", and had ice cream and macaroons!

'Sneaky Elehpants' is our team name, which we all agreed on. WHY? We were wondering through the markets when Amy (our lovely team leader) decided she wanted some of the cool genie pants. We bbegan a search for the 'perfect pants'. The criteria? No elephants! Every pair of pants we picked up had elephants on them! In every shape, size, colour, style you could think of... they were there! Though it may not seem funny written down, it was hilarious at the time!

Currently, I am sitting on my bed with a lemon face mask on, that boasts to "brighten, refine and refresh" the face, while Colleen went for the Cucumber mask! It is around 28 degrees, which makes a nice temperature at night. There are no mosquitos in our room (that I can see) and we have Jason Mraz playing in the background... I can't think of a more perfect finish to the night!

The working week starts again tomorrow, which will be really hard. This week we are transporting bricks in wheelbarrows (that are extremely hard to steer) and digging a trench for the foundations of the wall to be inserted in - in the scorching sun! It is going to be a really tough week, though I know we will all be able to pull each other through! Miss you all <3

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Photos

River Huts
A large family can live in these huts - we are so lucky!

Sneaky crocodile farm
Poor things awaiting their future to be handbags :(

Fresh rice paper rolls
I cooked them
Woooooo!

Dessert
Hello, heaven!