Siem Reap

After a 36 hours long journey, we finally arrived at Poeuy’s school in a small village located 30min away from Siem Reap, where we initially planned to volunteer for 10 days by teaching English to some local children 🏫
The level of Education at public schools in Cambodia is unfortunately pretty low since the Khmer Rouge period (end of the 70’s) as most of the educated people were killed, and children whose parents cannot afford private schools would come to that NGO school to attend English classes for free. The school is mainly run by volunteers, staying between a week and few months. We were a little surprised that so many volunteers were there as we arrived (12 including us), so we had to support the other volunteers the first two days and could have our own class only after. After one day of teaching, Vanessa unfortunately got sick badly so we had to leave the school suddenly to get some rest in a hotel in Siem Reap. We decided not to come back and left the school with mixed feelings. On the one hand, all students were sooo nice and most of them really keen to learn, on the other hand we were not totally inline with the way the school was running, especially considering how things were described online.

Few days later, and Vanessa being almost 100% fit again, we visited the Apopo Center with its famous rats saving lives 🐀 Regional and internal conflicts from the 1960s to late 1998 left Cambodia as one of the most landmine affected countries in the world. Trained rats appeared to be extremely good at detecting the smell of explosives. They are much quicker than human beings, so they are used to help cleaning dangerous areas and make them safe again for the population. We learned how they are trained and what the detecting and cleaning processes consist of. These rats are also very cute! ☺️

On another day, we went to Angkor Wat - the top destination in Cambodia. Built in the 12th century and rediscovered for the world in 1860, Angkor Wat may be the largest religious structure on Earth. It is only one of many temples in the Angkor Archeological Complex.
The forgotten medieval metropolis used to be home to more than 1,000,000 people, and it’s considered to be the largest preindustrial city before the Khmers abandoned it.
We woke up early to see the sunrise, which gets a 6/10 as it wasn’t as magical as we expected 😅
That day we saw the main temples, enjoyed ancient temples, beautiful carvings and A LOT of stones. We booked a private tour guide to learn more about the history. The guy was nice but the minute we met him, he didn’t stop talking (for 10 hours) and we just could not understand him (due to his pace, or accent, or maybe both 😂) What a pity! It might have been nicer to read about the history ourselves and quietly enjoy the temple’s atmosphere 🛕

Besides these two excursions, we enjoyed walking down the river, spending some time at the local markets, trying different street food, having a look at the famous Pub Street, and chilling by the swimming pool in our hostel 😎Baca lagi