I’m sitting on an aeroplane flying over Prague on route to Paris in the final hour of our 12 hour flight that departed Bangkok at midnight. It has been a big 36 hours as we left Siem Reap by bus at 8am two days ago and made the 10 hour bus trip, which involved hopping off at the Cambodian side of the boarder, putting our packs on and walking through the boarder in 41 degree heat to our bus waiting on the other side. This was made somewhat more difficult by the fact that I had thrown out our second copies of our visa that I thought we no longer needed. Thanks to some quick thinking and a generous French man I was able to hot spot his phone, access my emails and screen shot a photo of each visa. However, the incident certainly had the cortisol and Adrenalin levels sky high! We then had to walk about 500 meters in the crazy heat with our packs to the Thai side, stand in line for over an hour and then wait in the heat for another hour for our bus to make it through boarder control. The kids were amazing, however our adventures were not quite over…. 4 hours later when we arrived into Bangkok our bus stopped on a random road and told us our drop off point was not accessible. Again, thanks to some very friendly Polish guys with data, we established where we were and grabbed a taxi to Kohsan Road. It turned out that we had arrived during the weekend coronation of the Thai King – the first in 70 years – the place was humming. Thai nationals were all wearing Yellow, roads were closed and a huge security presents. The following day was going to be the Kings parade, where he was carried on a throne around a parade route to greet the people and we and situated ourselves unknowing right in the middle. This meant the next day we could not leave our street if we wished to return to our hotel, and that we would need to walk out to get to our flight. So after a very quite day, we set off with packs on for our last trek in 38 degrees – 5km to the train to the airport. Surprisingly, one benefit to the craziness that we landed into the middle of – the streets were closed to traffic and empty of people – very different to our experience one month ago. Our walk took us down some amazing boulevards which were all immaculately clean for the correlation. We got to the station, plied the kids full of green Fanta to keep them going and discovered that thanks to the King all trains were free saving us $50 – thanks King for the empty roads and free transport – a great way to finish our time in SE Asia and very different from the frantic congested spaces we have come to associate with this part of the world.

Two weeks earlier

Our experiences since my last post have been so varied, except for the heat – it did not drop below 38 the entire time we were in Asia. We are excited about the prospect of no longer sweating buckets each day – which is defiantly going to be the case as the pilot just informed us that it will be 2 degrees in Paris when we land!!. Our slow boat to Laos was a lovely experience of the less touristy areas of Laos, villages where there were no visible signs of power or modern conveniences and the towns only accessible by the water. The rubbish on the river was extremely confronting, plastic bags full thrown in to the river, just as we would throw them into the garbage bin. For locals I guess they float away and thus are disposed of, but one can only think of what the impact is down stream.

Plastic is everywhere, the water industry is massive and locals prefer the smallest single use bottles rather than purchasing larger containers. Plastic is put in plastic bags, coffee and cold drinks are put in single plastic bags so you can have ‘carry handles’. Once when we returned to a street vender with our plastic containers to reuse tham for another meal, he smiled took them, threw them in his bin and got new ones – reusing was not a concept understood – and why would it be when plastic is so cheap. Anyway, I digress.

Arriving in Luang Prabang was another cultural shift, the French colonial influence makes the centre of the city a beautiful fusion of east and west. It is clear that the town was not bombed during the wars which saw more bombs dropped on the region that the whole of world war 2 (thanks Chloe for sharing this with me from when you visited the war museum and Jemima and I went to cooking school!). We found a little hostel with the delightful name of Friendly Freedom Place. Chosen because it had a little pool and it was also $20 a night. We only booked one night because at that price we believed it had to be too good to be true, however it turned out to be fantastic, with an amazing breakfast included. This breakfast included baguettes (thanks French influence) which to a carb addicted family was a welcome site and the first bread we had had since leaving home.

Luang Prabang had been raved about by several friends and it did not disappoint. The Kuang Si waterfalls would be in the top 5 waterfalls in the world that I have seen (and there has been a few) the water, infused with limestone was the most amazing blue and had that smooth almost creamy feeling to it. It was also thankfully freezing cold and lovely to swim around in.

The food and markets provided lovely nighttime experiences, dining on the banks of the Mekong river watching the boats going past and eating food that explodes with flavour, the curries, spring rolls and noodle soups will be amongst our fondest memories from this time.

The other will most definitely be our day at the Elephant Rescue Sanctuary – I am not sure if watching the kids interacting with the elephants or my own experience was better. The sanctuary has been set up with the ethos that responsible and ethical tourist experiences is the best way to protect and rescue abused elephants.

The money they make from visits like ours goes to purchasing land and recovering the jungle for the elephants to live in and buying elephants from the logging industry where they are still used heavily. The elephants come from the forest each morning and are never tied up or restrained in any way. Each elephant has a full time carer who lives in a hut in the forest – they are called a Mahout. They instruct the elephants with voice commands only and we spent the day trying to learn the commands, taking the elephants to the jungle and the highlight was definitely swimming with the elephants and giving them a bath. We also had a lovely lunch and access to the pool when we were not with the elephants. What beautiful and intelligent creatures – also packed full of personality.

Finally, before we left Laos Jemima used one of her vouchers she got for her birthday in Bangkok (not the punch Dibs one, or the ‘not sitting in the middle seat of the car’ one) but the cooking school. Jemima and I spent a wonderful day choosing our menu, attending the local market to buy the ingredients, preparing and then consuming our creations. It was such a special day and we are looking forward to cooking these things (especially spring rolls) when we get home.

Cambodia – 10 days of service.

The week before arriving in Cambodia, Shem, Dibs and I read a book called “how not to start an Orphanage by a woman who did’ by Tara Winkler, an Australian who has been on Australian Story. The book was recommended by Growing Cambodia, the Australian Charity who we would be volunteering with. I am so glad they did. The book looks at ways in which aid, foreign charities and volunteering can have both positive and negative effects in developing countries. It provides a fairly confronting look at the effects of well meaning, but misplaced giving. Issues such as voluntourism (such as us) leading to exploitation of misfortune. The increase in orphanages in Cambodia is alarming, and up to 80% of kids living in orphanages are not actually orphans, however orphanages attract funding at much higher rates that money to support families to stay together, it also leads to widespread exploitation of children by unscrupulous managers who set up orphanages to make money and who sell donations of goods for profit. Lesson – do not visit orphanages it encourages the trade of child misfortune. Schools unfortunately can be very similar and aid agencies should be carefully vetted before getting involved with. Another one I found interesting was issues caused by having westerners come in to carry out unskilled labour such as helping to build something that they are not skilled to do and which takes jobs away from local families. So it was with this knowledge that we as a family embarked on our volunteering (not a great feeling!)

However, I still believe there is good in what we did and these are the reasons. The schools we did visit do not hear English speaking people very often and both students and teachers were very keen on hearing the way we pronounced things – it is a shame it is not a regular occurrence as the spasmodic appearance of volunteers is unsettling. At one school we visited, we were the first westerners that had ever visited the school and they were over the moon.

There were 3 classes going at once with students between 10-18 years old. They split us into the three classes and this meant Dibs went into one class on his own. He was pretty shocked when the teacher gave him the text book and said – you teach!!! This happened to all of us, and while I was hesitant to take over and offend the teacher (they did not know we were coming) the teacher was right – it was such a unique opportunity for the students to listen to us. At the end of the night the students all wanted photos with the kids as they just don’t see ‘white people’!!

We taught for 5 days, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon and evening. The last day we went to 3 schools over 8 hours in 40 degrees – it was a huge day and the kids did so unbelievably well, not only teaching, but also making the most of this unique experience – where they found verbal language is not the only way to communicate.

On one of our days off we went to the Touch of Life soup kitchen and helped from 8am until 1pm preparing and serving over 200 meals. Mavis, who has been running A Touch of Life for 11 years, believes in supporting local families living in poverty in a respectful way that preserves the dignity of the people. Local children can drop in at any point in the morning and share snacks with the volunteers preparing the food, make use of the toys and colouring materials and help out. Children can also do jobs to earn school supplies and things they might want or need. Mavis explained to us how important it is for the children not to be reduced into begging and expecting handouts as if will lead to cycles of dependency.

As a family we worked with 6 others to prepare omelettes, soup and stir fry. Chopping, packing and then finally serving and washing up. The local people are free to come and have a meal, no questions asked and also take another meal for dinner. I loved the fact that people were free to serve themselves and return for additional helpings – even the littlest and that there was almost no waste – not like when my 3 go to a buffet! Mavis does this 4 times a week and there are many regulars (expats) who help. She says she was looking for meaning in her life and this gives it to her. Jemima, Chloe and Dibs were very impressed (as were Shem and I) and donated a great deal of the money they had saved to this cause.

We of course spent a day at the Angkor ruins and Shem and I marvelled at how much things had changed since we were here 17 years ago, when Siem Reap was almost all dirt roads and there were still land mine warning sings in the fields. The number of tourists was staggering and I can not event begin to think what it must be like in the busy period. The massive hotels that line the streets reminds me of Las Vargas. The heat prevented us from exploring in too much detail, but we did enjoy recreating some of the photos taken last time!

Asia reflection

Coming to this part of the world was not part of our original plan and if I had been organised to look up the expected weather it might not have been, however I am very grateful we did. The variety of experiences that captured all our senses will leave a lasting impact on us all. The kids are certainty much more culturally aware, physically tougher and have a more worldly idea about wealth, poverty and education. Also the food was awesome!!!