Cambodia Medical Voluntour Pt7

JANUARY 19

From my room at the resort I had a lovely view of the sunrise.  I dashed outside in my PJs to get these photos.  That is Margaret having some quiet time.  Across the other side of the water is the fun park and the Mushrooms I spoke about in the previous blog post.

Today was our Sabbath day and most of us went out to the Children's Village to have church with them.  The other group of volunteers from Perth was taking the service.  The them was being shielded by God's Armour so the kids had foam shields with a person on it and every now and then they would get handed an extra part of the armour to stick on.

In front of mum and I was two mothers.  They had about 4 little kids they were trying to look after and at the same time stick these things to the shield.

This is a video I took of them singing.  It sounded soooo nice.  Unfortunately the speakers picked up the speaking voices too well.

This little boy was a right horror to his mother.  She coped really well with him.

 

 Some of the pieces didn't quite fit well on the foam shield so one of the mothers got creative. 

The two mothers busy assembling.

 

Such a little cutie

 

Giving a helping hand to feed.

 

Has the helmet now

After Church I finally found my little girl.  Isn't she a sweetie.  Can't speak english yet so Sopheavy translated for me.  She said she saw me during church and recognised me from photos (but I still had to go hunting for her).

Just before lunch Tanya took us on a tour of the Village.  There are 150 kids that live here.  There are 12-15 kids in each home with house parents to look after them.  This is so that they get as close to a normal family upbringing as possible.  There is a lot of love that flows from the parents to these kids and it is returned.  The house fathers will work on the farm that helps provide food and the mothers prepare the food and do the clothes washing etc.

 

As a side note, the power here is currently run on a generator.  In a couple of months they will be connecting up to the main power supply.  In the mean time the poor house mothers wash clothes the old fashioned way ... a scrubbing board.  There are four washing machines coming next month but of course they have to wait for the power to come on before they can use them.

 

One of the house fathers with some of homes behind



This is a new home that is being set up for the older girls.  It is so that they can't start learning to be more independent of their house parents.

Part of the produce they grow

Looks a little like outback Australia.  The water pump is relatively new.

Back in time for lunch and getting your hair braided.

 

Apparently the boys are better at it than the girls.

 

 

When I received the itinerary for today, it said something about a mountain climb.  I was like "OMG" there is no way I could get this butt up a steep mountain.  Anyway the mountain happened to 1000 steps up to a Temple.  I really didn't want to miss out and when I found out you could pay for a motorbike to take you up, I was thrilled.   Firstly I have a habit of either falling up or down stairs.  We do not like each other.  I was already well on the way to mum's cold and didn't want to add bruising or broken limbs.  Also I am fat and even when I was 20kgs lighter and doing Jacobs ladder (350 + stairs) I would not have done it.  By the time I got up there I would have to turn around and come down again.  In fact I made a damn good decision by using the bike.  The fit young ones had shaky legs by the time they came back down and apparently the stairs were so slippery even the locals were falling over.

 

Once at the Temple ($2 up and $2 back),  My motor bike taxi guy wanted me to pay straight away.  They are supposed to wait if we have negotiated both ways.  I wasn't stupid.  If I gave him $4 now he would rack off.  So I shook my head and got him to tell me where to meet him to take me down before walking off.

 

There were monkeys everywhere.  I love monkeys.  This cheeky one was trying to get into the cars that were allowed up there.

Just hanging ...

Annoyed that this one is blurred.  I love his expression.

The Monkeys were mainly around this statue

What really saddened me is that the local kids thought it was funny to provoke the monkeys into chasing them.  Not only is this cruel but it also meant that anyone who happened suddenly upon a monkey may also be "attacked" as one of my team found out.

More images of the Temple

More Infra red images.  Not that happy with them.  If I change it to B&W it looks like a standard B&W and not an infra red one.  Below I have done colour alteration ones.  I think the issue may be that I am using a low Infra red spectrum filter rather than a high one.  Next time I will have to get one that lets more infra red in.

 

 

I must admit these do look better than the colour ones.

The main Temple

 

A monk that let me take his photo

A lion face. Ankor Watt has a lot of these.  Makes me wonder if lions ever existed in Cambodia.

An interesting alter room.  The tree was 3D plastic with leaves that blew in the wind.  This is Buddhist Nun.  I didn't see any in my last visit.

Love these two shots.

There were alcoves everywhere with different Buddhas.

Don't ask me who or why I have no idea.

 

From the top of the stairs looking down

 

From the bottom looking up. 

Maybe I will do the stairs next time.  The only problem is the sellers at the bottom of the stairs only had warm coke and water.  You really needed something cold by then.