JungleJulia: Cambodia

Tuk Tuk adventures

möööp, möp, möööööp..with increasing intensity of pomping the horn of the little tuk tuk, filled with 4 girls, 4 big suitcases and several little bags..the driver tries to squeeze through a space half as wide as his tuk tuk between what seems like a thousand motos that go peep peep and a big jeep.When we already saw ourselfes hooked to several motorbikes pulling us apart when departing in different directions at the next intersection, magically the space opened exactly the width that we needed to pass before turning right in a rather neckbraking angle that nearly threw us out of the little squared mobile.But there we were...all save with still all our bags, feet, hands save in front of our little guesthouse.

Welcome to Asia my friends!

magnificent tuk tuk

express delivery of....??

Intersection...drive slowly and with caution and everything will fit ;-)

Family journey

Here i was, in Phnom Penh, Cambodias capital city, with a group of volunteers from all ages from the Fellowship of Hope, founded in Tasmania, Australia. Now, to understand how i got here we have to go back to my little happy stay at the northwest coast of Tassie. I was visiting the " Made with Love" market with Fiona, my dearest flatmate and discovered a little stall selling selfmade cards from orphans made in Cambodia.And so one thing led to another, asking Becky ( the women selling the cards) how she got them. She worked for the Fellowship of Hope and they visit 2-3 times a year Cambodia with fundation money to distribute under the poor. Whole villages have been saved from the floodings and their terrible living conditions by bying land and building with every helping hand from australian guys flying in to help, every kid transporting little buckets of soil, every man and women building a whole new little village with school. In 4 years Louise, one of the leaders of the group, achieved wonderful things. But back to Tassie, i asked Becky if we could stay in contact because i knew i want to visit Cambodia, i just wan´t sure when. Well, 3 days before my flight left to Bangkok, and still no sign of dicreasing of the floods, i looked into my last email that i got from Becky..and there it was, the date of the next group flying in: exactly in 4 days time. That was a clear sign from the universe for me, so i wrote some emails, had some phonecalls, booked a planeticket from Bangkok to PP and ..well, here i was.

so you know where the hell i´m hanging around...

2 weeks passed in a heartbeat, filled with visits to different villages, playing with kids, teaching simple things,adoring there happy smiles, distributing waterfilters, fixing houses that had been treated bad by the floods, de-licing kids ( and just for security reasons..ourselfs too ;-) ) , giving out clothes, hygiene packaches and school kits. We had really good times all working together, and it is so nice and refreshing to see that despite there very hard lives everybody welcomes you with open arms and a smile coming directly from their hearts.

introducing us to the kids.

favorite game...so much laughter

thats how people live here..

in queue for de-licing

hopefully rinsing all of them off

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Southeastasia, and being to hell and back,several wars diminising their country, being carpet bombed by the US, being ruled by the french by decades, but the worsed is still to come, beeing the takeover of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. It was year zero, money had no value, cities were abandoned and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, including the well educated ( especially them) were relocated to the countryside, tortured to death or executed.About 2 million Cambodians died between 1975 and 1979 under the genocid rules of the Khmer Rouge.
The country is still recovering from this years of tremendous desaster..but it is on its way.. to a beautiful country with beautiful people with more beautiful smiles.

here some more impressions of life in Cambodia