Return to Happiness....

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To get from the beautiful 4,000 islands to Cambodia we'd booked a package that would take us over the border and the remaining 50odd kilometres to the town of Stung Treng. The crossing was fine, little huts either side of no mans land, but we did get ripped off in the usual border fee manner because that day the Cambodian border police had decided that they needed some extra money and decided to charge $21 instead of the usual $20.. a fact reinforced when the visa sticker clearly had $20 printed on it! Sophie did her best to argue but as usual with these things she was on a losing battle! Things were made worse still when we were then charged another $1 for the stamp.. bloody cheek!

The bus journey was fine once we got going. For some reason we all had to wait at the border for an hour while the man in charge figured out who went on each bus.. not that hard when there's only one bus but we waited patiently in the soaring heat anyway. We arrived in Stung Treng in time for lunch and said our goodbyes to Jocelyn who was heading South to Siem Reap. Our plan was to stay here the night then travel to the Ratanakiri province we'd been keen to see on our last visit to Cambodia but didn't have the time.

After booking in a hotel we had a nice lunch and were glad to be back in the country we'd fell in love with the first time around. We booked our tickets for the following morning and took a walk round the town stopping for a beer on the riverside on the way. During the day the hotel manager informed us that we should perhaps reconsider our trip to Ratanakiri as the weather there had been awful and people who had come back were saying they were just stuck in their rooms for days on end. We could easily imagine how this was possible after visiting the Moldunakiri Province before and seeing the endless km's of dirt roads which would have been inpassable in the wet so spent the afternoon considering our options.

In the end we decided to change our plans and take him up on his offer of changing our tickets and going straight to Phnom Penh instead. Unfortunately the manager finished in the afternoon and left a stand in who spoke virtually no English but just enough to tell us that basically he couldn't swap our tickets and we would have to go. We were not happy having been promised in the afternoon we could swap our tickets no problem so went to bed hoping he'd be back in the morning to help us out. He wasn't! It was 6am and the bus to Phnom Penh left at 6.40am so we had to make a rash decision and chose to ditch the tickets, lose the money and buy new ones and we were soon on our way, still a little annoyed we'd wasted $16 but we could make this back and felt sure we'd chose right.

It was a welcome sight as we drove across the friendship bridge of Phnom Penh into the city centre which was to be our home for the best part of a month. As this was our 3rd time here we knew exactly where we wanted to be and immediately fell back into the usual 'no thank you' over and over and over and over again to all the tuk tuk drivers as they tried to get us to go with them. We'd decided for a change of scenery this time around and headed for the riverside area where we would get a greater selection of food and it's slightly more central than the lakeside which is quite a long way from everything. After a couple of tries we found a lovely guesthouse (Last Home) with a huge room and cable tv for just $6 a night, the only snag being it was on the 3rd floor so lots of stairs to climb to get there!

We spent 3 days doing not much really! We mooched around town, watched tv, ate and generally took it easy before deciding that enough was enough and we should head over to the CCH area and begin our teaching seeing as this was the main reason we had come back to Cambodia. We got a tuk tuk to take us on the 20 minute ride there having to remember where it was as our driver didn't have a clue. The area around CCH is not for tourists at all. There are 3 gueshouses nearby but 2 of the 3 are guesthouses come brothels! Despite all the warnings against it, we wanted to stay in this notoriously bad area for a few reasons; one being that we didn't want to pay out for a ride there and back each day, the second being that by staying in this area we could come and go as and when we pleased rather than being set to a pick up time,and lastly we could enjoy a few minutes extra in bed if we didn't have the 20minute journey there each morning!

After being told that the favoured guesthouse wasn't accepting foreigners for fear of catching swine flu, we checked into a guesthouse come brothel for the bargain price of $4 a night.. it had cable tv and this was hugely important with nothing to do in the evenings so we were quite happy. The room was clean and the owner very friendly so it really could have been much worse.. the decor wasn't really to our taste as we don't really go in for the condom posters on the wall thing back in the UK but nevermind! We dumped our bags and headed straight for CCH to begin our 2 weeks of work with the kids. We got straight into it with Sophie being given the grades 1 & 2 to teach English to and Dale getting the older grades to teach Maths to the older grades 5 & 6. These were to be our classes for the coming weeks and it gave us a good opportunity to really get to know the children, something we were both keen to do after our flying visit the last time.

As time went on Dale actually faired better teaching Maths than Sophie did teaching English which was a shock to both of us. Whereas Sophie would come up with something to teach them that morning, keep the kids entertained for approximately 1 hour before they all began running riot, drawing and trying to do her hair, Dale planned what he was going to teach, did homework and gave structured lessons soon putting them in their place with a few firm words if they stepped out of line. We both enjoyed teaching the kids so much but for those that know Sophie well, her patience is a lot more limited than Dales and the kids really did stretch this to the max resulting in her being totally exhausted by the end of each day! She now had a new respect for teachers who teach small children like this day in day out, they are cute and all but bloody hard work! Dale got a lot more out of his lessons and actually came out of the 2 weeks having learnt things himself which he was quite chuffed about... if anyone needs to know about algebra give him a shout!

The only bad thing about staying in this area was the food.. or severe lack of it. As we said this area is not for tourists so there was a very limited choice for us each day with our food consisting of the following.. egg/unidentifiable meat with rice for breakfast then egg/unidentifiable meat with rice for lunch from a garage come restaurant where they played WWF and Martial Arts films at the same time on full volume all day every day. If we got really sick of this we would opt for the noodles but as the broth tasted like it was made from dishwater we had to be really sick of rice to eat this. Thankfully for us we found our food saviour on the 3rd evening in the shape of a small chinese restaurant run by the nicest couple you would wish to meet. We were so happy when we found it we could have cried as we'd eaten pratically nothing but packets of crisps for the previous 2 nights and were beginning to dispair. The only other bad thing was that the terrible food restarted Sophie's bad stomach which wouldn't shift for the entire time of us being there, this did not help with her energy levels when the kids wanted her to run round playing hopping tag at each break!

Apart from the teaching we also got to enjoy a few days out with the kids which was a a lot of fun. Our first outing was to tag along to one of the roadshows they do for village children in the surrounding area. These roadshows are a way to help educate the local children and it's lovely to see the CCH children giving something back to the community. During the roadshow they give the children various short lessons on English, singing etc, stage performances with traditional dancing and a role play on personal hygiene as well as a small competition where prizes are won. The whole thing is very well done and both the CCH children and the local children all get a lot from it. We had a bit of a disaster on the way back when our minibus broke down and about 15 kids and us were all stranded in a small village for 6 hours while the van got repaired. This was not really a bad experience though as we were welcomed into a villagers house where they fed us, gave us palm wine to drink (horrible) and generally made us all feel right at home.

Our second outing was a boat trip along the river with the kids from CCH and also CDCC (another orphanage for dump children) which was a gift from Marc Gold who runs 100 Friends, an organisation which raises money to donate to some of the poorest people across Asia and the world. He works closely with Sokha at CCH sponsoring various children and donating money to the organisation. The boat trip was such fun, some of the kids have never been on a boat before so it was all very exciting and we enjoyed singing, dancing and food for the 3 hours up and down the river. For some children the boat experience wasn't so good when they developed sea sickness and one was sick all down Sophie's back! Lovely!

Because we could stay at the centre until much later this time around we got to know a lot of the older children who don't get back from school until 6 or 7. We got a lot out of helping & chatting to these children and enjoyed finding out their aspirations & ambitions for their future life. Many plan to go away to schools in Italy, Singapore or Japan but without fail they all want to return to Cambodia to help rebuild the society which was destroyed so recently.

All too soon though our time there had come to an end. Our final day was a sad one but made very special because the children had made us a box each with some little gifts in. These sort of things mean so much to us becuase for kids who don't have much they are always keen to share what they do have and it's such a difference from the children in the UK. These children really are quite special, their attitude towards making a success of themselves is amazing. They have been given a great opportunity at CCH and there is no evidence that any of them take this for granted and they all make the most of it with the older children studying all day every day, even at the weekends & summer holidays. There were tears from all sides as we had to say goodbye at the gates for our final time but have resolved to return here in the future and also plan to do all we can to help them on our return to the UK.

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Photos

CCH Girls
Samnang, SreyNeath, Minia, SreyNoch & SreyLeak.. lots of girls are 'Srey' which means girls in Kumer

Kids at local school
We went to with the roadshow

Masked student
He was studying in this!

Comments

[Ashlee]

Dinner
You definitely need to go somewhere you can get a better dinner next time! Although I can't imagine how special that must've felt to teach those kids, especially as they give you a gift when you leave. You wouldn't get that from the spoilt rich kids in England! xxx