Daily Reflections by Anupriya & Sheng Wei

11 Dec 2010

Today started off with breakfast at our Beach Road hotel at Sihanoukville. It was really delicious, pancakes were huge and we managed to set off punctually at 8.00am. We took a van ride for one and half hours, and everyone got to catch up on their sleep, and everyone made a short pit-stop for drinks and a toilet break. There was a small souvenir shop and people went in to take a look and enjoy the air-con. Along the way, we saw quite a number of shabby looking houses, which was a bit shocking since we were supposed to be near the city area.

As we were reaching our hotel, Sotheany mentioned that the Russian market would start closing at 4.30, and that would mean we would have to finish our lunch, visit to the genocide museum and shopping in 4 hours. As this was too rushed, we decided to cancel our lunch appointment with the Friends’ restaurant, so that we did not have to rush through the museum visit. The vehicles weaved their way through the little streets and we finally reached the hotel (Frangipani 60s @ Street 252) around 1pm, and checked in quickly to leave for the museum at about 1.30.

At the museum, we gave ourselves about 1 hour 15 minutes to look around.

For most of us it was truly an eye-opener, as though most of us knew about the Khmer Rouge, we did not know the details and had definitely not seen the very place where the prisoners were kept. We walked through 4 buildings and looked at the prison cells, instruments of torture, mug shots of victims and stories about both the victims and people that joined the regime. We even saw the skulls of some of the victims. The museum visit was really interesting, leaving some of us depressed and the mood somber.

After the visit, we then left for the Russian Market, and gave ourselves about 2 hours to look through the entire square. We originally felt a bit lost, since the shops felt quite crammed together. We broke up into several groups and started looking through the shops. The hungrier ones went to grab a bite at KFC and ended up not having enough time to shop. After a while of looking, we realized that most of the shops were actually selling the same thing. Getting advice from Sotheany, we learnt that most of the prices were jacked up, because it was a tourist attraction, so we tried shamelessly bargaining with the shopkeepers. Some of us tried buying stuff from the same shop to get a bigger discount. Some of us less blessed with bargaining skills ended up paying prices above the original. At about 5.45pm, we met up at Rajana, a shop set up by a NGO, and people started shopping again. Since most of them had chosen shopping over food earlier, tummys were now rumbling and so we went straight for dinner, even though the reservation was made for 7pm. We reached Jacob’s Well restaurant at about 6.30pm and had a very nice meal there. It was a nice place to have our last dinner together as a team.

We got back to our hotel at 9.00pm, and most of us were quite happy with our rooms, and that we had the entire hotel to ourselves. It was amazing how these 2 weeks flew by so fast, and it has not really hit us yet, that we were going to leave this country tomorrow. We really enjoyed ourselves, though it took us a while to get used to the life in the village, most of us grew to enjoy the village life. It really felt as if we were thrown out of our comfort zone, but felt proud of the team for being able to adapt to the new lifestyle and successfully carry out our project. We think most of us are grateful for having the opportunity to embark on this project and be part of making a difference in the lives of others at the village we were at. We finally realized and saw the efforts we put in throughout the year bear fruit as we saw the gratitude of the people whose lives we managed to touch.

We finally felt that all the effort we have put in, has finally, paid off.