Missions Trip to Cambodia - Day 1
6 Nov 2008
My kind brother Jun Ming has already done a very excellent writeup (much better than what I can ever write) about what we did in Cambodia, so I am not going to write about it again! You can read it here.
What I am going to do however is to add my own thoughts on top of what Jun Ming has already written.
As we had to leave our homes by about 4am in the morning, I decided not to sleep. Thus I was pretty much knocked out when we arrived at the airport. I was expecting to head straight to Phnom Penh. Little did I know that the plane took a little detour to Siem Reap. While we were flying over Siem Reap, I saw what looked like a large body of water.
Picture taken from another site, but this is roughly what we saw.
"Eh? How come there is a sea in the middle of Cambodia?" I thought. I later learnt that it was the Tonle Sap. Should've paid more attention to my Geography teacher.
Anyway, after arriving in Phnom Penh, we boarded the bus that would take us to Battambang at about 10am. We were told that it would be a 3-hour ride .... but ended up taking 7 hours instead. Along the way, the bus stopped three times. We were all very hungry, and were eager to dig our teeth into some delicious Cambodian cuisine ... until we saw this.
Courtesy of Jun Ming
As you can see from the picture, with the exception of the mango and the pomelo, the food weren't exactly uhhh ... what we were usually accustomed to. There were also a lot of houseflies, and that more or less killed my appetite.
So much for lunch! It was pretty much a similar scene at all three rest stops. Kah Ong, the courageous one amongst us, bought a roundish, green-looking fruit. Most of us tried one of the fruit and stopped there -- the brave Kah Ong finished the rest (he later revealed to us that he had a stomach ache after that).
We arrived at Battambang at 5pm (after a looooooong 7-hour ride). Suel Pratt (the lady in orange), the YWAM Coordinator at Battambang was there to greet us.
Courtesy of Jun Ming
Finally, we had some food that was edible !! Yum yum !! When we arrived at the Guest House, the cook at the place cooked us some pretty good food too. For a moment, I wondered if they cooked Chinese food specially for us. But I later learnt that a typical Cambodian meal is actually very similar to Chinese food.
At the Guest House, we were greeted with the loud, deafening blare of music from some really happy neighbours. At moments, it sounded like Cambodian music. At other times it sounded like Buddhist chanting. It was really loud, and I mean LOUD. Anyway, they continued to share their joy with us until 10pm, before the music ended.
The rest of the day is pretty much summed up in Jun Ming's article, which you can read here.
My kind brother Jun Ming has already done a very excellent writeup (much better than what I can ever write) about what we did in Cambodia, so I am not going to write about it again! You can read it here.
What I am going to do however is to add my own thoughts on top of what Jun Ming has already written.
As we had to leave our homes by about 4am in the morning, I decided not to sleep. Thus I was pretty much knocked out when we arrived at the airport. I was expecting to head straight to Phnom Penh. Little did I know that the plane took a little detour to Siem Reap. While we were flying over Siem Reap, I saw what looked like a large body of water.
Picture taken from another site, but this is roughly what we saw.
"Eh? How come there is a sea in the middle of Cambodia?" I thought. I later learnt that it was the Tonle Sap. Should've paid more attention to my Geography teacher.
Anyway, after arriving in Phnom Penh, we boarded the bus that would take us to Battambang at about 10am. We were told that it would be a 3-hour ride .... but ended up taking 7 hours instead. Along the way, the bus stopped three times. We were all very hungry, and were eager to dig our teeth into some delicious Cambodian cuisine ... until we saw this.
Courtesy of Jun Ming
As you can see from the picture, with the exception of the mango and the pomelo, the food weren't exactly uhhh ... what we were usually accustomed to. There were also a lot of houseflies, and that more or less killed my appetite.
So much for lunch! It was pretty much a similar scene at all three rest stops. Kah Ong, the courageous one amongst us, bought a roundish, green-looking fruit. Most of us tried one of the fruit and stopped there -- the brave Kah Ong finished the rest (he later revealed to us that he had a stomach ache after that).
We arrived at Battambang at 5pm (after a looooooong 7-hour ride). Suel Pratt (the lady in orange), the YWAM Coordinator at Battambang was there to greet us.
Courtesy of Jun Ming
Finally, we had some food that was edible !! Yum yum !! When we arrived at the Guest House, the cook at the place cooked us some pretty good food too. For a moment, I wondered if they cooked Chinese food specially for us. But I later learnt that a typical Cambodian meal is actually very similar to Chinese food.
At the Guest House, we were greeted with the loud, deafening blare of music from some really happy neighbours. At moments, it sounded like Cambodian music. At other times it sounded like Buddhist chanting. It was really loud, and I mean LOUD. Anyway, they continued to share their joy with us until 10pm, before the music ended.
The rest of the day is pretty much summed up in Jun Ming's article, which you can read here.
