Crickets Yum Yum!

May 28

I didn't actually get ripped off on the taxi from the airport! April was coming from some other hotel that was closer. And I was reading the itinerary from g adventures and it said depending on traffic and the way you go a taxi will be between 350 and 500 baht. So yey! I didn't suck after all haha.

Today we left at 6:30am to make sure we would make it to the border and not have to stand in 2 hour lines. We had to drive about 4 hours from bangkok to the border. We stopped after about 2 hours at a 7-11. A lot of the girls were a little uneasy about the Asian style toilets. I was like okay move over. I had to do #2 and honestly going poo in the squat toilet is so much easier. Maybe I'm crazy.
While stopped we had to fill out our visa forms for the Cambodian Visa. Then after driving another 2 hours we took a 5 minute stop at the Cambodian consulate at the border on the Thai side and were assigned our Cambodian visas. They are nice and green. Also, if I would have bought it in the US I would have paid around 200USD. Here it was 1100 baht which is about 35USD. Yey saving money!!!
We got out at the border and they put our bags into a wooden wagon wheel barrel thing and a person took it across the border for us. Again, a lot of people thought they would never see their bags again. I didn't even think twice about it since that's what happened at the Indian Nepalese border as well.
We waited for a bit and then started walking. I didn't even get to take a picture f the you are now leaving Thailand sign because I thought we would see it after we went through a building but we never saw it again. I did get a picture of the archway for the Republic of Cambodia... I think that is what it had said. We also crossed the friendship bridge between Thailand and Cambodia and it was really small. Like maybe a few feet long. I'm not sure if it was the real one or not.
We got out stamp saying we were leaving Thailand and filled out our departure card and then we walked across the border and went into another little building. There we got our entry stamp for Cambodia and had to fill out our arrival card. They staple your departure card directly to your passport. Makes it easy to not misplace it.
Once we crossed, I had to use the bathroom again. I thought I was going to get diarrhea again and I was like really self. You need to get your shit together. But I haven't gotten it yet, knock on wood!
We hopped into a bus and it took us maybe 5 minutes to the bus station where we got into a different bus. Our bags had been loaded into the back of the first bus and to put them into the second bus the buses pulled up close to each other and the drivers just passed the luggage through the window! It was very clever.
We still had to drive about 2 and a half hours to the hotel in Siem Reap.
I was really tired and kept dozing off. In the vans on the way to the border I thought I would sleep but we all talked. I was in a van with April, Marianna, Kristen, and Ed. We talked about music and the difference between education and health care in Britain and the US. We also talked about a lot of other things.
From the parts I was awake and saw of the Cambodian countryside, it was very flat. There was also not very many people walking around whereas in Thailand there were a bunch of people all over. The streets were less busy as well. It may have been because it was the middle of the day and not a big city but I don't know. It seemed very dry. There were nice patches of green trees or random palm trees hanging out In a small group or alone. There were a lot of brown fields and green grass. I saw maybe 2 hills the whole time and they were right next to each other. We drove past some rivers as well. It was disgusting. The water was a very light brown, mucky color. It didn't even resemble water one bit. There were cows roaming around ANDD drumroll please, an air conditioned bus to take us around!
The field had these strange looking plastic and wood contraptions in them. Matt told us they were to protect the crops from insects. It was 2 wooden sticks that had another wooden stick joining them at the top with a piece of long clear plastic that went to the ground from the top of the horizontal stick. Then there was a bucket of water at the bottom. When the bugs jumped at the crops they would hit the plastic and fall into the water. Farmers got it going on!
It was still pretty hot in the bus though. It was pink and they called it the lady boy color. This was the first time people on this trip realized you start sweating in places you didn't even knew sweat and it leaves marks for the entire world to see. Everyone had wet asses and thighs and arm pits and groins and backs.
When we got to the hotel we had 2 hours to do as we pleased. All of us decided to go swimming. Originally I just sat on the side and was working on my blog but it looked so refreshing and it was so hot so I said screw you to the blog and jumped in. I really miss being in a pool! We used to go all the time when I was little. Maybe I'll start swimming when I get home... In all my spare time...
I rinsed off after the pool in freezing cold water and put my sweaty nasty clothes from the day back on. I don't want to have to go through 2 shirts and pants a day. I don't have enough clothing for that.
We met again at 5pm for a very original experience in Cambodia. We were going to see the New Hope Center. This is a very different side of Cambodia we were told most people do not see. It was just a few miles from the hotel and it is one of the poorest communities in Siem Reap.
With g adventures (the company I am traveling on most of my tours with), they partner with planeterra which is a non-profit organization dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives of people and communities around the world through support of international charities, local organizations and community projects in the places we visit. It's a pretty cool idea.
At New Hope we went to their original start up building at first. It was very basic and run down. There were 8 rooms which included a medical center and a classroom. The rooms were pretty small. The tour guide was telling us that they have now built a new facility so the old facilities now houses 8 families. The kids that were there were all so cute and they LOVED that we were there. They wanted to hold our hands and be picked up and play with our stuff (sunglasses, water bottles, etc.). They walked with us all around the village. We don't normally get to visit the village but it was a national holiday so the kids were off school and we had the opportunity to do so.
The living conditions were extremely basic. Small huts with not very much in them.
We were told that they are very poor and don't have very much but they don't know anything else so they don't really complain or anything. They were all smiling and seemed happy. We got to see the olde and younger kids playing volleyball as well.
One family we saw who was sponsored by New Hope had 4 children plus the mom and dad. The families make about 75 cents a day. Maybe $20 a month. Most of the children are the ones that have to work for the families by going out and selling trinkets or begging for money. This means they can't really go to school since they work during the day. Many of the women in the community work in brothels as well. The men pay about $1 or $2 for sex and if they do not want to use a condom they can pay an extra dollar.
Men do not want to have sex with their pregnant wives because they think it will harm the baby. Many of the men then seek out the brothels for sex. Ron, an Australian man who has been a large Help for New Hope, said that most of the women are HIV positive now so a number of children are contracting the disease as well from birth. If children are born with mental retardation or something else, its looked down upon and usually the people think that it is because they had sex with their wife while she was pregnant. There are not HIV meds in Cambodia as of today.
New Hope was started by a poor Cambodian (Khmer) man. He was waiting by a few tourists to collect their bottles when they were done drinking to get money from them. The tourists wondered why he wasn't in school and he said that he really wanted to go to school but he didn't know of any. The tour guide knew of a school and came back the next day to bring him to the school.
In Cambodia you are required to have a signature from your parents to go to school and his parents needed him to work so they wouldn't sign. He went back to the school and told them this. He wanted to study before he had to go to work. The school told him if he could find 10 kids that they would run a class from 4am to 7am so he found kids who wanted to do this and they studied and went to work after class. He ended up making how own business I think and he is still studying for his PhD degree.
He came to visit this community and saw how poor they were and how the kids were working and not going to school. He started running classes for the kids from his own home. I don't remember exactly all the details and how things happened but New Hope was created. They provide free education for the students. They end up paying the families for what the kids would make that day from donations and g adventure trip funds. At the school there is a computer room, a library, and many classrooms, as well as a room with a lot of sewing machines. They are trying to get women out of the brothels by teaching them sewing skills so they can make money from that. New Hope is opening their own shop to sell the items the girls make. They are also teaching basic computer skills so the people can go into the town and get a job.
They do the same with the restaurant. They accept 5 or 6 trainees and train them in customer service for the year an then they can go out and find a job. They also have a tourism office where they train people as well. All the people they train are from this very poor community. Essentially they are helping them to help themselves make a living.
There is also a hospital at the New Hope center. Everything they do at New Hope is free. The hospitals in Cambodia are not free. Any treatment you receive you have to pay for. (There is a children's hospital in the city that is free but only for children). A bed costs $8. If you bring your own bed it costs $2. Ron said there are bodies all over the place because there aren't care providers either so each patient has their own family member with them to help make sure they are staying cool or getting treatment. He said you literally crawl over people. He also said that a lot of people will come in for treatment but if they cannot pay, they are not able to receive treatment. Some people will also have an operation but they can't afford pain killers so they just don't get them.
New Hope provides medical help to all the families in the village for free. There is a volunteer nurse from Australia I think and she teaches the doctors in the community.
There is med school in Cambodia but I guess the standards and what they are taught is not very good. Right now there are also 2 doctors from Canada (I think) who teach the local doctors. They are always looking for more volunteers so if anyone wants to come out...
Ron said that westerners shouldn't and can't be in Cambodia forever so they really try to do as much as possible to help the locals live on their own. In the New Hooe hospital, there are also 7 social workers with about 60 families each on their books. I'm not sure if the social workers are locals or volunteers.
We then had the pleasure of eating in the New Hope restaurant. We were served spring rolls with a sweet and spicy sauce. There were also crickets, beans with a sugar coating, and sweet potato chips waiting for us on the table when we arrived. The fried cricket was actually nice tasting. I prefer the cricket to the scorpion. When we arrive in Phnom Penh Matt said we will have the opportunity to try a spider. I think a tarantula? I still have a few days to get used to that idea though. The strange food hasn't really been too bad. It's one of those things you can't really think about. And you figure it has to be fine since people here eat them all the time. But I think once you start thinking about what you are eating is when you get into trouble and start getting the heebie jeebies. At the restaurant we were also served rice with a pumpkin curry and morning glory which was green beans with pork. For dessert it was green beans with a little bit of sugar and coconut juice sprinkled over the top. All of it was very good. I think I'm still traumatized from Anna's week of cooking pumpkin everything senior year of college but even the pumpkin curry was incredibly enjoyable.
After New Hope, we went back to the hotel and walked across the street to an ATM. Literally, the Cambodian money is worth so little they actually use USD. That is what you get from the ATM. When you pay, they don't have coins so you get Cambodian money for change, especially if the change is under $1. The exchange rate is approximately 4,000 Cambodian Riel to $1. The largest bill I have seen is 20,000 Riel which is about $5 and I think the smallest is a 500 Riel bill which is maybe 12 cents.
Even though everything is still pretty cheap here, because it is in USD I feel like I am spending more money. I can't explain why. Spending 40 baht ($1) seems way less than paying $1 because of the exchange rate. It's all the same though.
Matt took us around real quick to introduce us to the Night Market (which is apparently the second best on our trip) and Pub Street. While walking I pointed at a necklace that I thought was cute and the lady jumped on it immediately. She wanted $5 but I wasn't even going to buy it. I said $2 and she wanted me to pay $4 and then $3 and I walked away and said I would come back tomorrow (which I was fully intending to do) and she said ok $2! So I bought another necklace. I probably shouldn't have bought anything because now I am buying more than I should. Grrrrr. The stuff here I also like a lot more than in India or Nepal.
We were all pretty tired so we went back to the hotel after being shown around pretty quickly. We have an early morning tomorrow! Wake up call at 4:30am, leaving for Angkor Wat at 4:45am to make it to see sunrise.
I don't really know too much about anything I am doing over here. I didn't research any of the sites and I don't have any expectations. I'm in the dark for the most part aside from the big things. Before I left people kept asking me what I was most excited for or most looking forward to and I wasn't sure. The more I think about it, I think I would say Malaysia. I know absolutely nothing about Malaysia but it was my first country assignment for International Relations at my first.. And only conference. I don't even remember too much about it because I was in the WHO and our bill had nothing to do with me because we didn't even have a health care system or good hospitals.

P.S. I forgot to write down the Thai words I learned. Thank you is "ka poo kha" (men would say ka poo khop). The "kha" is kind of longer and drawn out a bit. Hello is "saw wah dee kha" same with the way it is drawn out and khop for the men.