Here I Am! - Cambodia blog entry #2

           I didn’t know where to start, so I decided to show you pictures of the Projects Abroad volunteer house first. After you’ve looked at them, if you want to read my ramblings of our arrival in Cambodia, you sure can. Didn’t want to bore you from the get go.  

My bed

The other side of our bedroom

The living space / dining room downstairs

We had a very small balcony from our room and this was the view from it. 

There was a roof top deck, however, on the six story building we were in and this is the view from there. 

This will be the first trip in a long time where I didn’t bring my trusty laptop. I prepared a journal with typed descriptions of all the places we would be visiting, leaving pages in between each place to write facts and my thoughts at the time.

Then I decided that maybe I’d try journaling into my cellphone. I wasn’t sure how it would work as I hate typing on my phone, with my big clumsy right index finger. Type with both thumbs? Are you kidding? That’s even more difficult for my arthritic hands. I gave it a shot, though, first sending myself an email via my phone, then typing a Google document on the Drive.  

Our flight arrived on time at 11:15. Getting thru immigration was easy, as our paper work was in order. Just hand him my passport, Visa, and e-arrival QR code. Stick my hand in the finger print reader. Or is it really a device which sucks out part of our life force for the government to use to strengthen its military?

Baggage claim. Wait and wait. How do some of those bags spit right out and ours is always one of the last. When Denise's came down the conveyor I thought, yeah, mine is next. But then it was another 20 minutes. Or so it felt. Really probably two more spins of the belt.

Outside, our ride Phirum, was waiting with the Projects Abroad sign and wearing their signature green shirt. Greeting us with a smile and a wave. Did our American looks stand out that much. Considering there were only two other non-Asians on our flight and one of them was a man. Yes, I guess we were easy to pick out.

Ride to house was maybe 20 minutes. The streets! So, like Nairobi. It was like being back home in Africa. The chaos. The vehicles whipping by on all sides, many more scooters and motorbikes than in Kenya though. Whole families - mom, dad, a little boy, a baby girl, all riding lined up on one bike. Sometimes wearing helmets and eye protection, sometimes not.

And the smells. Garbage of course, but fried food too. The occasional whiff of raw fish hanging in the hot sun. Didn't notice the diesel fumes which are prevalent in Kenya though.

The sounds of motors running. Somebody grinding metal, lines and lines of auto and bike shops. Very few horns honking in the chaos. Such patient, pleasant people.

Anxious to try the street food but will wait for one of the workers here to direct us.

We met out guide for the two weeks – Khouch Ken, who we will call K. After a short rest and some unpacking, he took us out to eat supper at a place called Eleven One.

Tuk tik ride there thru the same busy streets, even more crazy in the twilight.  And because we rode in a tuk tuk, as opposed to riding in the car from the airport, we were closer to the sights and sounds. No obstructing car windows, closed so the air conditioning isn’t wasted.

Oh, yes, the heat and humidity. The rooms at the volunteer house were air conditioned, but as soon as you open one of the doors, the oppressive weather takes your breath away.   

Anyway, the restaurant was very nice. Had an open air ceiling, so no AC but not too warm with the sky above and fans churning in all the corners.       

I had the stir fry chicken with mango and cashews. Denise had the shrimp with toasted hash brown potatoes. I don’t remember what K had but it was adorable, a little teepee of rice next to his main dish of some meat in some sauce. Because we just met him, we didn’t try it, but as the week went on, we all tried each other’s meals. Pictures of all those meals will be coming later.

          Back to the house and fell into bed at eight to sleep like the dead.

Where am I? – Cambodia blog entry #1

           I opened my eyes and looked across the dark room. A dim light was streaming outside the open door from a source to the right. Where was the bathroom? It had to be out there somewhere.

          My travel partner, D, snored very close behind me. We’d been sleeping in separate beds for the past sixteen nights; why was she in bed with me now?

          Then it dawned on me. It was my husband snoring, and I was home in my own bed.

          I rolled over and read the clock. The red number 12:15 screamed at me. Totally exhausted, I’d crawled into this perfectly comfy bed only four hours ago. Why was I wide awake?

          Darned jet lag.

          My left brain wondered from the beginning how I’d be affected by this phenomenon this trip. Previously, I’d only ever flown to Kenya, eight time zones to the east, and jet lag never bothered me when I got there, but always messed me up when I got home.

This trip took me twelve time zones to the west. So my left brain reasoned that the jet lag would be worse going to Cambodia and not as bad when I got home.

Left Brain has definitely got it wrong. Right Brain believes that when I go somewhere, I am so excited about the trip that my body and my brain adjust quickly so as not to miss out on anything. When I get home, all the hormones let loose, and my internal clock doesn’t want to switch back to Central Standard Time; it just wants to sleep.

And Stomach Clock grumbles because it thinks it’s just past noon and we should be eating.

Then Writer’s Brain pulls me by the arm to get me out of bed to write down all these peculiar thoughts because it knows that, just like when we dream, if I go back to sleep, all of this will be gone.

So here I am, at 1:40 am, trying to keep my eyes open while the rest of me feels crazy-energized. But I am going to follow the lead of my eyes and wander back to bed. Whether I go back to sleep or not, who knows? Will my hypothalamus figure this out and allow me to drift peacefully off, or will the rest of my brain continue bouncing around neurons?

In any case, I’ve been home from Cambodia for just over thirteen hours. It’s been forty-eight hours since I left, I think, because I still can’t put any part of my brain around the whole time travel thing about these trips.

It was a short flight from Phnom Penh to Taiwan with a brief layover at Taipei Airport. The ticket on the second flight read that we were leaving there at 8:00 pm and arriving at our destination in Chicago at 8:45 pm. So, I’m supposed to convince my body that it took 45 minutes to fly halfway around the world when I know it really took thirteen hours.

Oh, well, I’ll come around. I promise that on Friday, I will start posting about my once-in-a-lifetime, fifty-years-in-the-making trip.    

Good night – or good morning. And the first and last pictures - with over 2,000 taken in between.  

Sunset over Chicago before our flight out

Sunrise over Chicago before our drive home from the hotel

Can’t put my head around it

September eleventh. 911. Twenty-three years ago. So long ago. So tragic. Hard to believe that there are young people out there today who weren’t alive on that day.

I won’t be flying today, but I will be flying on Friday the 13^th. I’m not superstitious. And at least there won’t be a full moon.

There are a lot of thoughts and images running through my mind. I watched the movie “The Killing Fields” yesterday and have been reading all I can about that time in Cambodian history.

I just can’t put my head around it. Sure, I was only twelve years old when the Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia and instituted its brutal form of communism. But all I remember hearing about in the 1970s was Vietnam. Shoot, I even wrote a novel about the Vietnam War. So, I was aware of at least some news when I was entering my teens. But it sounds like the Cambodian genocide was swept under the rug at the time. 

Here I am, about to fly halfway around the world to learn, firsthand, about the plight of the Cambodian people fifty years ago. I think of meeting someone my age, who was also twelve years old at that time, and instead of worrying about what they were going to wear to school on picture day, they were just trying to stay alive.

As I posted the end of August, there have been many genocides over the decades. When will the madness end?

Questions Answered

         This is going to be long, but you’ve asked me lots of questions, so hopefully this answers them all.

What am I actually going to be doing on this trip to Cambodia? Is it another volunteer trip? Or just vacation? When am I going and when will I be back? And why Cambodia of all places?

This is a cultural immersion trip for adults over age 50. (We’ll see how it goes, and maybe the next crazy trip I take should be for adults with bodies that feel over 70 years old.)

So, what does “cultural immersion” mean? Instead of just seeing the sites, we will learn more about them and in between, learn about the culture, history, and religion of the country. One day, we’re even having a cooking class.

Our itinerary looks something like this:

Day 1: Orientation and acclimation to our surroundings, a short tour of the capital city of Phnom Penh, which will be our base for the trip

Day 2: More orientation, visit a local market, visit our first Buddhist temple Wat Phnom, watch the movie “The Killing Fields”

Day 3: Visit the Killing Fields and S-21 Prison Museum (this will be our most heart-wrenching day, but a necessary day to understand the culture)

Day 4: Visit a pepper farm, salt farm, and durian farm (yes, the world’s most stinky food), visit the beach on the Gulf of Thailand

Day 5: Bokor Mountain, waterfalls, sunset cruise for dinner and to see fireflies

Day 6 and 7: Travel back to Phnom Penh, rest up, then travel to Siem Reap the next day

Day 8 and 9: Explore the vast Angkor Wat temple complex (the whole reason I wanted to take this trip in the first place)

Day 10: Visit floating village and the Landmine Museum, dance show during dinner

Day 11: Travel to Battambang, ride the bamboo train

Day 12: Visit grape farm, a couple more temples, a cave and watch bats leave the cave at sunset

Day 13: Travel back to Phnom Penh, rest

Day 14: Visit a silk farm, pack to leave the next day

         Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? But so worth it!

We fly out of Chicago this Friday morning at 12:30! And arrive in Phnom Penh, Cambodia at 11:15 Saturday morning (that’s 11:15 Friday night for you at home, I think). We leave Phnom Penh on Sunday afternoon on September 29 and get back home to Chicago Sunday night. It’s time travel. I can never put my brain around it.

One more question you may have – what organization are you going with? Projects Abroad is the world’s largest provider of international volunteering, internships, and meaningful travel experiences. They’ve been running for over 30 years and have been trusted by over 130,000 participants who’ve joined their award-winning trips.

They run projects on four continents, including countries ranging from Botswana, South Africa, Mongolia, Philippines, Romania, Argentina, Galapagos Islands, and Fiji. If I were younger, I’d love to try some of their other trips, but most of them sound even more strenuous than this one to Cambodia. Please click this link to their website, though, to read more.

Click this link to find out more about the specific trip we will be taking. Oh, and when I say “we”, I mean me and my travel partner Denise. She is a fellow retired CMA from the eastern part of our state and has been to Kenya with me a few times. There is another woman who will be joining us, also, but I don’t know anything about her yet except that she’s from Great Britian.

How did I find out about Projects Abroad? As you may remember, I’ve wanted to go to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat since I was in 6^th grade. Feeling that I’m getting too old for many more long trips, back in January of 2020, I did a Google search of volunteer trips to Cambodia and this one came up first. After doing more research, I asked Denise if she was game to join me. She said, “yes”, and we signed up. Then a few weeks later, COVID-19 bowled us all over and grounded us for the next two years. Last year, my back pain and immobility caused me to cancel a third trip. But here we are, finally doing it.

Hope that answers all of your questions. 😊

Me and Denise in Kenya in 2015

Less than a week to go

Oh, boy. In one week, I will be starting my lifelong dream of visiting Cambodia. We land in Phnom Penh at 11:15 Saturday morning, which will be 11:15 Friday night Wisconsin time. It’s a fifteen-hour flight from Chicago to Taiwan and, after a three-and-a-half-hour layover, it’s another three and a half hours fly time from Taipei to Phnom Penh.

I can’t think about that long flight too much, though. It freaks me out. How can a plane stay airborne that long? How is that possible?

On all the other long-haul flights I’ve been on, after six hours or so, I’m nearly having a panic attack, just wanting to get off that plane. Instead of sleeping, I pace up and down the aisle, looking with jealousy at all the other sleeping passengers.

Why am I doing this again? Oh, yes, the temples at Angkor Wat.

Oh, but now that I’ve researched the country at length, there is so much else to see and experience. The beach at Kampot. Bokor Mountain. The bamboo railroad. Waterfalls, caves, and a sunset river cruise!

Sorry, no pictures yet! But go ahead and Google all that I’ve talked about and then wait patiently for me to post pictures on Facebook.

But maybe not any pictures of airplanes or airports, huh? 

A Really Quick Trip to Calumet

Last Wednesday, I shared a short two-day trip I had made with a friend in July. Today, I’ll tell you really quick about a trip Hubby and I took last month to Michigan’s UP. Our favorite place. But unfortunately, only for overnight.

 

After checking into our Airbnb in Calumet, our first stop was the Cooper Country Firefighters Museum.

Next was the Calumet Theater right across the street.

After we hit The Hut restaurant for dinner, I took a walk around town. This is the old depot. 

What a shame it has fallen into such disrepair. From what I could see through the windows, it’s still filled with character. 

Next morning, I took an early morning walk. Hate seeing a “do not enter” sign on a church, even if it is for the adjacent one-way street.

Such beautiful old buildings in and around downtown Calumet. 

But this was what we really went up north for – the jams and cookies at The Jampot.

And also, this, my favorite park. Esrey Park. It still takes me back to the many trips I made to the UP as a kid.

Of course, no trip to upper Michigan would be complete without a trip to this park. The sign might say that this is Calumet Waterworks Park, but for Hubby and I, it will always be Dino’s Park. 

I'm sure he's still playing fetch and swimming in Lake Superior, without ever getting tired, living his best life in doggie heaven. 

Prayer for Peace

 Lord, make us instruments of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

 

There is nothing more I can add to that.