Ni Hao!!!
So I know I haven't written to you all in a while but I have been writing. I have a few blogs I wrote before but never finished until now. So if they sound a little in the past that is why.
Ok so I know my blogs can be a little lengthy from time to time….or every time is probably more accurate so I am going to try and do my best to keep my blogs shorter from here on out. That might just mean more blogs and less length though haha. And seeing that I have been swamped with exams, finding a new apartment and going to and from the states, I am going to pop out about three blogs back to back to back. I know that’s the same as making one big one but I thought I would at least mix it up. Oh and this blog still ended up being a little long….sorry about it.
So I know you all have been waiting patiently for me to send out my latest blog and life has been just a little less enjoyable everyday that goes by without one so with no further adieu….here we go!
My trip to Cambodia and Malaysia was amazing and was all I hoped for and more. I was going to focus this blog just on Cambodia in an effort to keep it shorter but might as well wrap this trip all together. So what you can expect from this blog: trip through a nature reserve in Penang, visit to Petronas Towers (two tallest buildings in the world until late 2000’s), two trips to Angkor Wat, a Rotary service project in the Floating Villages on the Tonle Sap River and Lake, elephants, monkeys, Tuk Tuks and much more.
I flew into Penang (Island off the northwest side of Malaysia) Friday afternoon and was picked up by an amazing Rotarian Mrs. Gill. Her and her husband Dr. Gill hosted both me and another Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar from the US who is based in Kuala Lumpur, Ann Marie. The Gill’s were honestly the highlight of the trip to Penang for me. They were sweet, intelligent, giving and amazing. They took us out for food the first night (Penang is known for having amazing food, which was proven true) and we had Po Piah ( one of my favorite foods in Asia which is a thin wheat soft tortilla wrapped around steamed vegetables and shrimp and chopped like sushi) and Char tiew noodles with prawn/shrimp as well as iced chendol (a dessert here with a lot of sugar ice, red bean and gummy candies) they say diabetes is an issue in this region….these desserts are most likely ground zero as the cause…..but it was good.
In Penang we met up with a Rotary Group Study Exchange (GSE) group that was in Penang from Oregon. This group takes 30 days and travels around Malaysia learning about their respective fields while seeing the country.
So with this team we went and hiked through a nature reserve through a minor jungle that led us to a beach where we saw tracks where a green turtle had laid eggs the night before, got to see some already hatched baby green turtles that had been rescued, took a boat ride around that part of the island and finished it off by stuffing our faces with banana fritters and Indian food both which were some of the best tasting food I have experienced in life.
That night all of the Rotary Clubs met for dinner and we all sat, ate and had the opportunity to listen to the GSE team present. It is always fun meeting the Rotarians and this night was no different. The food was great but the people were even better.
The following day Ann Marie and I rented a cab for the day and we explored the island. We went to a fruit farm where we ate around 20 different types of fruit (I hadn’t heard of around half of them), we stopped in the chocolate and coffee tasting store which we took full advantage of, we attempted to enter a mosque but learned our attire was not appropriate, we hiked up to a waterfall (not big but it was water and it was falling so we counted it haha) and then finished off by grabbing some Mei Goreng (fried Chinese noodles) down by the beach. We circumnavigated the entire island in half a day, turns out Penang has a lot of development going on but didn’t see many people living in the houses…..real estate bubble??? Hopefully not for their sake.
Ann Marie and I then headed off to Kuala Lumpur where Ann Marie has a beautiful apartment she shares with two other girls for the outrageous price of $350 USD per person per month. The cost of living in Malaysia is MUCH less expensive to Singapore, think the same prices for everything and much cheaper for a lot of things yet in Malaysian Ringgit which is 3-1 US Dollars. Ann Marie took me to the Petronas towers which are owned by the state oil/gas company Petronas and were at one point the tallest buildings in the world. That night I presented to the Rotary Club of Pantai Valley. The food was great and it was my first introduction to some of the people that I was going on the trip to Cambodia with. The group was fun and extremely nice, I had a great time to say the least.
The next morning we got up around 3:30 am to get to the airport about an hour away to catch our early morning flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. The group consisted of around 30 Rotarians or friends or spouses of Rotarians. We took a low budget carrier Air Asia. I personally carried everything I had for that week in a backpack…..I really don’t know how my bag didn’t explode with all I packed into it.
First thing we do is go to the temples. For those not familiar with Angkor Wat, Angkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city, see attached picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat).
Having seen some temples and beautiful cathedrals in my short life span I was optimistic but cautious that these temples might not hold my attention enough to justify an entire trip to the country….safe to say not one of the temples let me down. The main temples we visited were at Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm and Banteay Srey. Some sites had multiple temples within them each with a different look and feel. It was amazing because no matter how tired we might have been each temple re-energized us with its grandeur. It really did live up to the hype of being one of the finalists for the 7 new wonders of the world.
After our first day touring the site we were pretty wiped out from the days events and early flight. I actually shared a room with one of the guys from the news corp. There were three different news reporters on the trip, one from the English paper, Malaysian Paper and Chinese paper….my roommate was from the English paper, they all spoke English very well though.
The next day we set off for what was the whole reason for the trip and arguably my favorite time spent. Over the past 7 years, The Rotary Club of Greentown had been actively involved in an International Service project with the Floating Village Communities on the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia together with their partners - in – service, The Lake Clinic, Cambodia and the Rotary Club of Middletown, Rhode Island, USA and Rotary Clubs in our own District 3300 and more recently clubs in D1190 United Kingdom. This year we were going out to the villages to bring some school supplies to the children’s school, install a clean water filter and tour the Lake Clinic.
We took our bus to a village about 30 minutes outside of town. There to greet us was a group of children coming in and out of their school located right where our boats were to depart from. While we waited to leave a lot of us played games with the children which was a blast. Some of the younger children were completely naked and most were not very clean but they seemed really happy. A few of them could speak some English as well which I was pretty impressed by. We played with them when we got back as well. I really enjoyed playing games with them, definitely a highlight of the trip.
So we jumped into our boats which fit around 15 people in each one and headed out to the floating villages. I had just watched Platoon and Apocalypse Now so I couldn’t help but think about both of the Vietnam war as we move up the river to our site. It was pretty crazy to think about.
The floating villages we were heading to were about 2 hours away but they weren’t the only floating villages out there. We drove through a few villages on our way and it was amazing to see these villages floating on the water not attached to any land. People were moving back and forth in little wooden boats some motorized some not. There were little wooden floating supply boats with food, candy, gasoline, etc. It was pretty crazy. I didn’t see anyone swimming though, I thought I might see that…maybe they just weren’t swimming at that time because I assume everyone there can swim.
We finally got to the village elementary school and the kids were adorable. They didn’t speak any English but it was clear that candy is the universal language of love. They actually were quite hesitant to dive into their bags of goodies for some reason so we helped them jump on in and then the fun began.
Afterwards the kids headed home which was amazing to see. There were some picked up by parents but most of the kids jumped into the little wooden boats and navigated their way out with paddles and coordination with other kids. You have to remember that none of these kids were older than maybe 10 with most being around 6 or 7 years old. It was interesting to see some of the kids come get picked up by a parent in a motorized boat which reminded me that no matter where you go in the world the Jones’ are everywhere. I wondered if those kids were known as the “rich kids”?
We then had lunch and headed over to the floating clinic. They have 3 nurses and a health administrator on staff and a group of rotating volunteer doctors that come and help. The clinic is there once every two weeks and they bring a boat which is retrofitted for surgery and privacy. If someone gets sick or hurt any other time than when this clinic is there, the people have to make due until they get back. The average life span of someone living in the villages is less than 50 years old. Rotary donates money and resources to this clinic to help with getting boats and paying for the staff. It is a great cause.
After this we then took a trip two doors down….again via boat seeing that we are on a river, to a little home where we installed a clean water unit. The unit is made of plastic and costs around $75 USD to make. The owners of the home have to pay $7 for the sand and gravel, etc. so that they can have ownership and something invested in the unit. This is because it takes maintenance to keep this process working and if people are just given the units they have a tendency to not really care if they ruin it. This way they have to really want it and since $7 is a lot of money to them they don’t want it to go to waste. It was pretty interesting that even with the lighter unit (most units are concrete but due to the weight a plastic unit is used on the smaller houses) they had to move the unit to the middle of the house (which was one room about 12x12) because the house was tipping into the water. Each unit is filled with gravel, small rocks and sand. Turns out if done correctly this will make dirty water clean for cheap.
We left the villages after that and made the 2 hour boat ride back to Siem Reap. This trip back was really nice because the sun was going down so everything was cooling off. I sat on the front of the boat and took in the views. It was really nice to be that far out and away from the developed world, almost like being in a different world.
That night we ended with a cultural show and dinner which was fun. They have the same show at every dinner we went to so I could probably dance it myself but still fun times.
Three of us stayed longer, Ann Marie, myself and David, a Malaysian school administrator from California.
The last three days we moved into a cheaper hotel, saw the temples again, caught Angkor Wat sunrise and sunset, hit up the street markets, got fish massages (fish nibbling at your feet, definitely tickles), got actual hour long $5 massages, ate lots of food, went horseback riding, rode around in Tuk Tuk’s (rickshaw’s with motorbikes attached to them) and drank 50 cent beers.
I also met up with the bank manager for a micro-finance bank in Cambodia named Kredit. A friend introduced me to the Bank’s CEO and he put me in contact with the branch manager. We sat together and he explained their business, their clients and expansion. Their loans range from $500 to $30,000 and their loan repayment is nearly 100%. They seem to have a great model for the region and are growing a lot.
One last thing..haha…while we were in Cambodia they were holding the Khmer Rouge trial so I thought I would share a little bit. In the late 1970’s early 1980’s the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia killed 1/3 of their countrymen. The first night they killed all the lawyers first, they then followed up by killing any doctor, engineer, teacher, etc. pretty much anyone with an education. Scary that this happened only 30 years ago which means that a lot of the people who conducted the killings are still active in the country….and only 4 people were on trial. Cambodia has come a long ways from those days and the people have done a lot of changing and forgiving but I can only assume that it will take Cambodia a couple of generations to recover from such a horrible event both emotionally and intellectually.
Miss you all,
Andrew
No comments:
Post a Comment