Good bye to CDO kids

Several new posts in one day- keep reading after this one!

We made one last trip to CDO to say goodbye to everyone and do one last medical check before we left. When we got in we got a nice surprise. They had all put on some new clothes and had lined up to take a picture just for us.

We arrived at 2pm and first off Nicole did some nursing while Stan played some games with the other kids. Nicole showed Tiina, a young lady who comes in every day to help at CDO, how to properly tend their sores (clean hands, don't use same cotton wool on different kids, etc). We gave her some money to by more medicine when needed.

Poor Moum's wound has been weeping and pussy for weeks.

Nurse Nicole

At 2:30, an older Italian couple were walking past and we (us and the children) called them in to join us. The Italian man immediately organised a game of football (soccer) and we all had a lot of fun.

At 3pm we had arranged for a little surprise for the kids. We got one of the pancake stands from the tourist area to stop past and make everyone a banana/chocolate/condensed milk pancake. These pancake stands are attached to a motor bike and easily pulled from one place to another. The kids had never seen a pancake stand up close before, let alone a pancake, so the stand was immediately swamped with curious faces pushed up against the glass. Those who could read English would point at the words and sound them out. "Paaan-caaake" they could work out, but "chocolate" was a bit too hard.

We got all the kids to wash their hands (we always tried to reinforce the hygiene lessons that some other volunteers had given previously) and line up from youngest to oldest to get their pancakes. It was funny watching them as they very obediently lined up with those in front watching the pancake cooking with absolute fascination. Many of those in front would shut their eyes and open their mouths. Tiina came up to Stan and said "they are trying to taste the pancake while it is cooking".

Kids all lining up.

Happy cooks.

All the kids bow and say thank you before getting their pancake.

As the line got slowly got shorter as people were given pancakes, the older kids at the back started getting bored and started picking the lice out of one another's hair. When Nicole caught them at it they were sent to go wash their hands AGAIN. There was much grumbling at this as no one wanted to lose their place in line. About 7 of them rushed off to wash their hands. When they came back, Stan got them all to hold out their hands for him to smell and any hands that didn't smell of soap had to be rewashed. This was viewed with much chagrin by those who had done a poor job wash their hands and to much laughter by those who had washed their hands properly. Two minutes later we caught them picking nits again and sent them all off to rewash their hands. This time they snuck back behind us and without us being aware of what they were up to, they grabbed our hands and put them on top of their heads. Then all the kids were laughing at us and yelling " go wash your hands, wash your hands". What could we do? We had to set an example so we washed our hands.

The kids loved the taste of the pancakes. Everyone got one, including the staff, a volunteer teacher who was there at the time and Stan and Nicole. The guys cooking pancakes, in a moment of generosity inspired by a weeks worth of orders all in one afternoon, cooked an extra four pancakes. Nicole cut these up into small pieces and the kids who were all still hanging around with us all got a little bit more much to their delight.

The little kids were first to get pancakes. Behind us you can see another treat; coca cola.

After pancakes, Stan showed the kids how he could walk on his hands. Before you knew it, there were at least 15 pairs of legs trying unsuccessfully to reach the sky.

They very quickly found some other ways to copy Stan.

Nicole showed them how to do wheelbarrow races. Often the person pushing the "wheelbarrow" would go a lot faster than the wheelbarrow could manage and some poor child would get face planted.

While they were all doing wheelbarrow races and eating a lot of dirt, some of the kids decided Stan needed a makeover and made him look very pretty with flowers and playdough earrings.

All too soon it was time to go. We took one last group photo.

The kids wanted to cover Nicole with flowers, but it was too early for flowers, so instead they covered her with flower buds.

Stan and Nicole were inundated with hugs left, right and centre.

Last minute photos were taken.

Then we had to go. The kids all came to the road side and yelled "byeeee Stan, byeee Anicole" (Anicole is the final name they gave Nicole). We walked down the road backwards waving at them and calling back "byeeee". Eventually the curve of the road blocked sight to them and it was a very sad moment for us both. We'd love to have taken them all back to Australia with us and given them the opportunities that children there do not even know how lucky they are to have.

Can we get 1000 page views?

Hi all, we are nearly back to Australia. Can we get 1000+ page views before we get home? If you have found this blog interesting, please send it to a friend to look through!
Stan and Nicole

Saying goodbye to Siem Reap

Our last few days in Siem Reap meant we had a lot of people to say goodbye to. We had our last trivia night. This time we made a team up of a girl, Amy, who was teaching at CDO for the last few weeks and an Israeli couple, Mica and Ariel, who would be doing two weeks of teaching once we left.

Nicole and Amy at trivia night. We are drinking the San Miguals that Nicole won in the charity raffle.

We also used our last bit of time to help those missing limbs from land mines who were trying to make a living in Siem Reap. Here you can see one land mine victim who does drawings and paintings about the local temples and sells them to tourists. What we found particularly endearing is that he paints himself into many of the pictures. If you look closely, you can see him in his wheelchair following a monk at Bayon temple.

We thought our suitcases would be a little overweight, so Nicole brought a lot of items to CDO to give away to the girls. They immediately kicked all the boys out of the house and had a "girls only" meeting (with Stan allowed to come take some pictures for a few minutes).

Meak shows off a new top, Sophy is wearing a new Sarong and Kounthy has just jumped up for the photo leaving all her goodies on the ground.

Kammah is showing off a fan nearly as big as she is!

Everyone (boys and girls) got a new toothbrush. The girls also got some make up and perfume to share.

Last day of teaching

Today was our last day of teaching at CDO. It was sad to hear the final chant of "Thank you teacher..." from all the children.  Nicole spent a lot of time doing some nursing. Many of the students have open wounds that constantly bleed, weep or fester in the heat. A little cut can take weeks to heal. One of the girls, Moum, has an awful sore on her leg that constantly weeps and seems to be getting bigger and bigger. At the beginning of his class Stan asked to see everyone's sores and if they needed attention he sent them up to see Nicole. It was a bit disturbing when one of the boys, Ping, surreptitiously used a pencil to open one of his scabs so he could get some attention from Nicole. We told him off, but it is really sad to see children so craving attention that they would do that to themselves, especially when they don't realise how easy it is for infection to set in in this climate. There was not water available at the time, so Nicole was forced to squeeze a bit of alcohol on her fingers between each child to try keep things sterile. She used some cotton wool to clean out all their wounds.

We told the children it was the last class we would teach them and throughout the day many of them came up quietly and handed us little notes or pictures to remember them with. It was very cute to watch them try and write a surprise "thank you" note to us. We knew what they were up to, but they thought they were being very sneaky going up to people who knew more English and asking for help to write their notes. Those who couldn't write English very well drew pictures instead.

One of the interesting forms of "massage" around here is what the locals call "Dr. Fish Massage". You dangle your feet into a fish tank and let the fish inside nibble off all your dead skin. We did this last week when Bill and Henny Berends were around. It is terribly ticklish. We are a bit dubious as to whether the fish do that great a job, but for $1 as long as you want, or $2 for a beer and as long as you want it was fun to try it out.

24'th of August

Our time is nearly up and both of us would love to stay on in Siem Reap if we could. We have been helping out at CDO today. There is an Australian volunteer there who has been taking a third class of children which is between the younger and older children. It makes things much easier to manage and the children learn more being in three rather than two classes.

On the wall of the orphanage there are some photos of some of the children before they moved to the orphanage and they looked extremely skinny and unhealthy. Malnutrition has affected many of them. For instance, the girl Sophy in the photo below is almost thirteen years old yet she is extremely tiny.

Because it was the last day of the person teaching the third class today, we had a short teaching afternoon and instead played some games with the kids. We played a few ball games and a game called "catch the fish" where you have to run from one side of the compound to the other without being caught.

All day one little boy was asking us, "where is Beeeeel" (Bill), and saying, "I want to see B, I, L, L" (Stan's dad taught him how to spell his name). He was very sad when we told him Bill won't be back tomorrow. "Christmas", he asked hopefully. "No not Christmas". So, Bill, if you are reading, you would make one boy's day if you can pop back and see him for Christmas.

On our way home after class we found this interesting snack along the road which gave Nicole the shivers.

Here it is in close up if you want a better view:

Your gifts

We remembered to bring our camera today to take some photos of what has happened with the gifts many of you have given to CDO.

You may remember that some of your gifts were used to help make CDO Orphanage less reliant on donations and to help create some income. Here are the bikes they rent out to tourists.

Here are the baby chickens they bought with the money. They are in some land they have leased behind the orphanage. Every night "Pa" (dad) has to sleep out here to prevent thieves from stealing the chicks. In the time we have been here, there has been a few attempted robberies. Its sad to see this happen when they have very little worth stealing.

The gas cooker is almost ready to be moved into the kitchen, but already it is being used (to our surprise). We had expected them to be a bit more wary of using gas, but we heard how wonderful it was that you could just turn on the stove and cook. With charcoal it takes a long time to get the coals hot enough to cook on. In the photo below you can see they have used it for lunch. When the concrete dries they will cover the gas bottles. They are making some changes to the kitchen (right side of the photo) so they can move the stove to where the kids will not be tempted to fiddle with the knobs.

Gas Cooking

Stan's grandmother, Oma Berends, his sister Ana and her husband Simon gave a donation to the orphanage and asked that we buy them something that would be useful. After discussions with Stan's dad who has an extensive history with helping poor in Africa for the seventeen years they lived there, it was decided that we would use the money to providing a gas cooker so they don't have to use charcoal any more. Currently they use one $5.00 bag of charcoal every three days. Using a gas bottle, we anticipate they will get a month's usage for about $17.00. Making the move to gas could save them over $350.00 a year.

They are currently rearranging the kitchen and making a secure room next to the kitchen to store the gas bottles so the children don't play with them. They also appear to be a bit hesitant to use gas with one lady telling me she is scared to use it. We'll try and cook a meal on it before we leave to show them it is safe and much easier than using charcoal.

Funny pictures

As you travel, you come across many funny or strange pictures and often you don't have a camera at hand. Here are two photos we took of some interesting pictures in Cambodia.

This was outside a toilet.

Tintin is found all over South East Asia in T-Shirts, paintings and prints. He is often featured with a local land mark. We came across this uniquely Cambodian rendition of "Tintin in Cambodia".

Stan's parents visit

We have been busy for a few days doing some sight seeing and visiting the orphanage with Stan's parents (Bill and Henny) who have made a detour to visit Cambodia on their way to Europe.

They arrived on Wednesday at 8am. We went out for lunch and introduced them to our favourite Cambodian meal, Char Kheung. After that we went to the War Museum where Sinath took us for a tour. Some information on Sinath and some photos are in an earlier post on our blog. We learned a few new things on the second tour. Sinath pointed out one vehicle and said that a Major General had been killed in there. He also mentioned that one of the tanks still had a skeleton in it that hadn't been removed. He gave us a rather gory account of how they had to clean remains out of destroyed tanks given that people would be boiled to death in the intense heat of a burning tank. We also learned that Sinath was lucky to be alive. When he was blind in both eyes and had lost a leg, the army planned on giving him a euthanasia injection (apparently standard practice in Cambodia in the civil war). A friend took him away from the "hospital" where he was to have the injection and he became a begger until a UN sponsored program took him to Thailand where he had sight restored in one eye. He jokes that he never saw Bangkok, but her certainly smelled it. His sight slowly returned when he got back to Cambodia.

The next day we all went to the temple complex doing the shorter one day tour which visits the main temples, but only visits about one third of the temples in the area.

We visited Angkor Wat, the most famous temple who's sheer size is just astounding. It has a moat around it and the dimensions of the wall surrounding it is 1300x1500 meters. It contains eight giant stone carved pictures which are about 3 meters high and 200 meters long depicting Hindu scenes. It could take most of a day to explore alone if you had the time.

Here is the view from near he centre of Angkor Wat out towards the wall and the main gate of the temple. You can see a balloon about to go up in the distance.

From Angkor Wat we went to Bayon which is famous for the many carved faces of a deity which face every direction. (coincidently, the deity's face closely resembles that of the king who built the temple).

From here it was a short walk to Baphoun.

If you walk off the beaten track, you can come across some lovely ruins slowly decaying in the jungle.

Climbing the temples is hard work as the Khmer believed that approaching the "gods" should not be an easy task. The steps are about 45 centimetres high and 10 centimetres wide.

Nicole and Henny climbing up some stairs.

Other than Angkor Wat, probably the most famous temple is Ta Premh which was featured in the movie "Tomb Raider". This place really has a tremendous atmosphere to it and you get a feeling of what the early French explorers felt as they discovered these temples in the middle of the jungle. The temple has been overgrown with massive trees with impressive root systems running over and through the temple.

Bill and Henny between the roots of a tree growing over the temple.

You have to be careful in the jungle. We came across this huge snake.

Actually it was only 15cm long and we had to zoom in to photograph it

One of the last places we stopped was a swimming pool built for the private use of a king.

Stan, Nicole and Henny are enjoying sitting down for a spell.

Thank you Deakin University ITSD

Hi Everyone,

Today Stan and Nicole had the pleasure of giving some of the donations we have received from our readers to CDO Orphanage. We'd especially like to recognise Deakin University's Information Technology Services Division (ITSD) for the morning tea that raised AU$241.10. This was morning tea was organised by Erica Lehmann and the Professional Services Team in ITSD.

So a big THANK YOU to all you generous people in ITSD, Erica and everyone in the Professional Services Team. We have a laminated thank you card from the children at CDO. Until I get back to Geelong to give this to you all, this photo will have to suffice:

Nearly everyone signed this with their name and age. Unfortunately we couldn't find a couple of the children. Some got excited and signed it several times. 

Here is the receipt we got on behalf of ITSD. The currency exchange rate we got was AU$1.00 = US$1.02. So the $248 includes all the change we had on us when we handed over your donation.

I am happy to say that your donation will go to a number of useful causes at the orphanage. A small amount will be used for some immediate needs such as food, but even better, (in our opinion) most of your donation will go to programs that will allow the orphanage to be more sustainable and less reliant on hand outs. These programs include buying and raising baby chickens (for food and for sale), which also teaches useful agriculture skills. They also are buying a few bicycles which they will rent out to tourists to use around Siem Reap. Over the next few days we will update the blog with photos of how your money has helped.

We also had the pleasure of giving one other donation of US$204. So today CDO had the equivalent of seven months of "Cambodian wages" donated all at once.

Early August- Thailand with the family

We are in Cambodia now, but while we were in Thailand we caught up with Matt (Stan's brother) and his wife Maree and Ana (Stan's sister) and her husband Simon. We were together in Phuket and on Phi Phi Island. We all met on Phi Phi Island where we did a couple island tours and a day's diving.

On the island tour, we stopped in a lovely lagoon and did some swimming.

Matt, Ana, Maree, Simon and Stan in the photo. Nicole is behind the camera.

We stopped at a Maya bay to do some swimming. This was a lovely beach, but unfortunately the wind was blowing from the main land and we were swimming with a lot of plastic bags.

Maya beach from the water.

Ana and Maree swimming on Maya beach

When leaving Maya beach, we had to walk to the other side of the island and swim back to our boat through a rough current and razor sharp rocks.

Stan getting ready to swim to the boat avoiding the rocks.

All the tourists trying to swim back to their boats.

We got back to Phi Phi Island and relaxed on our balcony. This was the view from our cabin. 

We didn't have the camera for our diving trip unfortunately. We all went diving except for Ana who had injured her ribs in soccer and couldn't handle the pressure under water. Matt and Maree as first time divers did two dives where they went down 12 metres. Stan, Nicole and Simon went down to 18 metres and were underwater for 61 minutes each dive. We saw two turtles the second dive and a massive moray eel (about 3 metres long) swam right under us. Our dive master was quite impressed with us and wanted to take the boat to a more challenging location for our second dive, but none of the other divers wanted to go there. We still had fun in both locations. We will probably start on our "Advanced Open Water" certification on our next holiday.

We also spent some time in Phuket. We didn't pull out the camera much, but we did have a good time relaxing after all our excursions on Phi Phi Island. We went to the cinema and watched "Transformers Dark Side of the Moon" (waste of $3) and the new "Planet of the Apes". We went out one evening and watched a live band play. They were pretty good. After that we had a couple drinks in town where the bar maids challenged us to "connect four" and a game where you hammer nails into a tree trunk with a hammer whose head is about three millimetres thick making it very hard to hit the nail. After a few days in Phuket, we said good bye to the family and returned to Siem Reap.