Cambodia Trip: Day 2, 6-12-2008 (Phnom Penh)

For the second day, we had a new tour guide, whom I had forgotten name. First, we went to visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum is a former high school that was changed to a prison by the Khmer rouge. This place really gave me an impact on foolishness and cruelty of human. I also realised that I actually had very little knowledge regarding the history of Cambodia even though it is very near to my country. I was ashamed of myself for being so ignorant of the sufferings of the people in Cambodia. In the museum, I learned a lot about Pol Pot and the Khmer rouge because the tour guide was very good in explaining things to us. She also stated that many of the high ranking people in Khmer rouge is still hiding in the jungle near Thai border. The Cambodian government is still trying to catch them. As for the normal Khmer rouge soldiers, they are not punished and still lives among the Cambodians. I want to quote some of her words ,' Cambodia is a Buddhist country. We forgive people for their wrong doings. We want to catch the high ranking Khmer rouge not because we want to punish them, but rather to find out exactly why they did those horrible things.' Later, we went to visit the killing fields where they uncovered the death bodies of the victims that were killed by the Khmer rouge. In the afternoon, we visited the royal palace. I noticed that all the tourist went inside using the side door as the main door will only be open when important people came to visit. The royal palace is a beautiful place. As Cambodia is a Buddhist country that is heavily influenced by Hinduism, we could see many statues of Buddha and also paintings of Ramayana story on the walls. In this day, I learned more about the history of Cambodia and also enjoyed myself in the royal palace.

Cambodia Trip : Day 1, 5-12-2008 (NTU – Phnom Penh)

We departed from NTU at 4am in the morning to Changi airport. After a two hours plane flight, we arrived at the Kingdom of Cambodia. Auntie Esther was there to welcome us. She introduced our tour guide for that day, 'Pixels' (I dunno how it spell but the pronunciation is something like this). He is a third year uni student studying tourism coming from Baray, the place we were going to offer our help. He brought us to go shopping in the Russian market and central market. As I sucked at bargaining, I didn't get a lot of good deals. It is fun to see how my fellow team mates bargained. The sellers charged us a higher price as it was evident that we were tourist and all us were wearing the same LDP shirt, marking us as 'water fish'. But if you are good at bargain, you should be able to lower the price by 30 to 50 percent. After shopping, we went for a boat ride on Mekong river. It was an enjoyable boat ride. We were watching the sunset on the boat while eating our dinner. My impression of Phnom Penh is that it is a city of contrast. The basic facilities there such as condition of the road, lamp post, buildings are worse than my home town, which is just a small town in Perak, Malaysia. However, as this is the capital city, I can see a lot of high tech gadgets being sold here. I even saw a advertisement showing that Macbook Air was sold in the shop. My feeling is that even though Phnom Penh the capital city and is full of shops, the basic facilities there fail to reflect the status of the city. This I think is the responsibility of the government of Cambodia.

Going to Cambodia

On 5th of Dec 2008(that is tomorrow), I am going to Cambodia for 11 days. This is under LDP Project L.O.V.E. In less than 24 hours, I will be boarding the aeroplane for the first time in my life. I, however, am not too excited at the moment. Maybe just before the event I will feel something. Anyway, the purpose of this trip is to help the Cambodian people in Baray. I just hope that I can do anything in my power to really help them. Wish me luck!