M&D in PP

It's always nice to have visitors, and last week Mum and Dad found the time to pop in here on the way to Europe. It was a whirlwind visit, but they managed to fit most of the interesting stuff in. After a quiet first day, the second day was a busy one. In the morning, we traveled out to the vocational training centre for the disabled at Banteay Prieb. This was a good opportunity to show them some of the work our organisation does. The school houses about 80 students aged 17 and up who have a variety of physical disabilities, many from landmines. Before coming to the centre, most of them had never been outside of the village where they grew up, and had never been given the opportunity to learn any skills or to feel like they could be useful members of society. The school houses the students, teaches them literacy and numeracy, and gives them training in one of a number of vocations including electronics repair, machine repair, sculpture, carpentry, tailoring or argriculture.

Also on the school grounds is a wheelchair factory and an office for rural development projects that help 215 poor villages.


After an excellent tour by John and a dose of Joaqui's magnanimous hospitality, we got back into our private taxi and were off to Cambodia's essential tourist attraction - Siem Reap.

For me, the temples didn't lose and of their magnificence the second time around. First up was Angkor Wat. Despite the steepness and uneveness of the steps, Mum and Dad bravely decided to make the trek to the top of the temple. The designers of Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious structure, had deliberately made it challenging to reach to the top level, to symbolise the fact that ascending to heaven was no easy task. But it was always rewarding.


The next big attraction was Bayon, with its 216 smiling faces (not including the tourists) which always seem to be described as "enigmatic" - almost to the point of cliche.


After lunch and some more walking around, we moved on to another favourite - Ta Phrom. Half claimed by the jungle before it was discovered by French explorers, this temple has earned its cliche of being "atmospheric".


We travelled by tuk-tuk, which is the most appropriate form of transport for a day at the temples, although sometimes the dust can be a bit too much!


I used our little trip to practice my Khmer (the Cambodian language). The highlight of this experience was at the Deadfish restaurant in Siem Reap, where I called the waitress over and asked for some more rice. The reply was not quite what I intended:

"Oh, I'm very well thank you! You speak Khmer very well!"

In my defence, the music was fairly loud, and the Khmer phrases for "more rice please" and "how are you?" are quite close, but nevertheless it was pretty embarrasing.

In the last few days in Phnom Penh, we covered some more of the tourist sights - the Royal Palace, the Russian Market, and finally the Killing Fields.


It's difficult to comprehend such madness in such a beautiful setting. Despite all the reading I've now done on the Khmer Rouge years from 1975-79, when about 1.5 million people were killed or died of starvation, I'm still a long way from understanding what happened here.

The somberness of that visit was nicely offset by a lovely and lively dinner (and then lunch) at the office with the people we live and work with. Denise, as always, was an excellent host.


All in all they seemed to enjoy their visit and I'm very glad they came.