Surmisings from 1 week in Cambodia

The visa story is all over now, and we are very thankful to God for giving us an entrance into India.
We went back on the Tuesday morning expecting to pick up our visa's and we had to drop off our passports and pick them up the same afternoon. Why we couldn't drop off our passports the previous week I'm not sure!! The only unfortunate thing is that the visa's are for a limited time of 4 months and are only single entry visa's. But we have them, and are consequently here in India!!! YAY.

So after a week in Cambodia what is there to tell?

You can order French Fried on any menu in Cambodia, Air Asia is the only airline that I've been on thus far that has free seating, and the only flight that in my entire trip that stole my nail file when I went through the x/rays, you can buy ready to cook frogs in the supermarket in the meat section, I had an excessively scrumptious chocolate brownie from a restaurant called 'jars of clay' (didn't work out if it was scriptual or not though), and Cambodia has the perfect environment to consume banana sundae's.

One afternoon we took a cruise along the river and were introduced to the way that the Vietnamese live in shanty houseboats on the river. Their whole existance is based on the water. I think I'd like to try it for a while, the only thing I'd be worried about would be the mosquito's. Although I'm not sure if I could fish so well as to earn a living by it.

That evening we went to a restaurant that supported an orphanage, so during the evening the children from the orphanage used the front of the restaurant as their stage for their Cambodian dancing. They do a lot of their moves with their fingers and bend them right back. Typical Cambodian dancing is very slow.

A couple of us walked along the river until it started raining and then jumped into a Took-took for shelter for quite some time until we realised the rain wasn't going to slow down and so got out and found a cafe to dry off in. It was quite the rla.

During the last few days the contacts arrived back from their holidays and we began classes again. I gave a class on believing in Jesus (from John 3v16) and it was good for me just to get back to the basics and realise that the way we show we believe is through showing love to those around us. So simple, so basic, so true. So good for me to relook at it just before the time in India. Our gospel is so simple.

The night before we flew out we invited all the contacts back for dinner. Now at the moment, all the contacts minus two are men and they are all between the ages of 20/25 so we had quite a male dominated meal. Loy the housekeeper (21) had also returned from holidays and she and Dad got cooking and made the most amazing Cambodian / Indian meal. Quite a treat for all those attending. Mouth watering dishes like Ginger Chicken, and Butter chicken were made in abundance. But while the meal was being prepared, we had everyone in the living room playing the biggest game of Emperor Scum ever!! I think we had 18 people playing and it was just so funny. Most of the contacts could speak at least some English, and others were very fluent so it made the evening quite easy in terms of language.

The morning we flew out, we packed our bags early and then left for the LCDI centre. The Leadership ... Development Centre houses about 200 young people who choose to go there for 3 years to further their skills in English, Accounting, Computer studies, Marketing, etc. Every week Melinda and Sarah volunteer to teach classes for a morning to help out. So we divided our family into groups of 2 and we all took an English class for the morning. It was amazing. As they are all about to go out and look for jobs, I thought it would be a good thing to write resume's with them all. It could've been a lot harder than it was! I think I found the hardest thing was to get them to write down what they were thinking onto paper. They could articulate themselves reasonably well, but then had the difficulty writing it out.
We had a break after a couple of hours, and then were shown round the grounds. It is very primitive living. One large barn sized building for guys and one for girls with mezzanine floors.. no bed, only matts on the ground for all.
After the break, some of the guys gave me flowers picked from the garden which was very sweet!! Didn't let them off the work they had to do though. I really enjoyed the morning. I don't teach classes of 30 young people everyday:-)

Heading back to the flat we had our last lunch at Asian Spice before we headed to the airport. Asian Spice has some of the best flavours that I've tasted in the whole of Cambodia..besides Loy's cooking which was amazing. It was sad she was only there for half of our stay. We're missing her and the rest of the family already.

Strangely enough they were selling NZ icecream at the airport. But thought it best to have an apple before I arrive on floury apple Indian soil.

Then we were back on Air Asia... the only airline where I've ever had to extend my seatbelt as well... didn't make me feel thin, and then flying back to Bangkok.