chornicles of project angel

credits to qiming for all the pics taken! :)

day 1: 21 may - where the journey begins..

cambodia from the air, just fields and more fields..no tall buildings or moving vehicles..


arrival at siem reap air port


an artistic shot with the wet market as the backdrop..i think..haha..


at the landmine museum...what cruel traps set by humans..

day 2: 22 may - the angkor wat







me and deb pretending to be goddesses



day 3 & 4: the real work begins..laying the foundation..


it's hard manual labour under the merciless sun........no joke!!

day 5: it rained! so we got a half day off.

paparazzi..kids posing for us on the streets of siem reap


nonetheless because i was in the cooking team today, we had to return to the host's house to prepare dinner..evidence that i cooked!! eh..or rather more accurately, i helped in the preparation haha..

day 6: first contact with the kids...

the old kropeu sch..

..is nothing more than a hut..







child labour

kids forming a human chain helping us with the laying of the foundation of the sch


trying desperately to communicate with the kids..but they're laughing at me cos they've no idea what i'm talking abt..haha..


ordering the kids! bossy me!

playing games






seeing how run down the old school was, playing with the kids and having them to help out with the construction, seeing them smiles and hearing their laughter...made everything worthwhile. though the language barrier prevent any deeper form of communication, love is felt from the heart..isnt it..

day 7: the work continues..and more games..

making cement the primitive way..manually mixing soil and packets of cement first, and then adding water thru a pipe connected to the well. we werent of much help at this stage.


playing with water


my group's turm to cook again.

more games



getting whipped..damn it hurt!



and work...

4 men team, these kids are stronger than what they looked..

day 8: bricks laying..

laying bricks isnt easy!!! we were so clumsy that the foreman refused to let us lay any more bricks the next day..haha..the section of wall we did turned out to be pretty slanted.

..and more games..

playing their version of lao ying zhuo xiao ji


we taught them how to play london bridge is falling down..


trapped!


assaulted!

some games are just universal..


drawing water from the well

with the kids, it's just so easy to be happy.

day 9: the day after we stayed on site in tents, bathed under the stars..a slack day..because we werent allowed to lay the bricks..haha..

oh no! caught on camera brushing my teeth!


me and lg disturbing yy..hahhaah..we look stupid


me and caihua writing our journal


our clothes line


looking upon the almost completed school...

day 10: the end is drawing near..

cooking


tranquility

day 11: visit to fishing village







sisterhood

day 12: the finale..

students in the new sch!


distributing out old sch blouses and pinafores that we brought from singapore.


a classroom full of students transformed! they looked absolutely adorable!..and clean..urps..


'la-ork!'..good in khmer..

balloon scrulpturing



me! costume for the cultural performance.

farewell..i wish i could do more..but there's just so much that we could do..

IT'S HOLIDAY TIME!! R&R!!
day 13: floating villages on tonle sap river










day 14..to be continued..

withdrawal symptoms

been 4 days since i came back from cambodia, and i'm still suffering from signs of withdrawal symptoms. i guess i'm not the only one, since most of us on the trip with me have phrases like 'missing cambodia' in our msn nicks. i really miss the 21 days i've spent there. i suppose it's not so much of the place, although i do like it; it's the company that i truly missed.

i miss waking up in the mornings and already having jokes hurled around. i miss having great company around me. i miss holidaying around. i miss looking forward to a day full of events and adventures. i miss the cheap food. i miss taking the tuk tuk around. i miss the shopping. i miss bargaining and the thrill of bargaining. i miss the vast blue skies and puffy clouds. i miss the rainbows. i miss bugging qm to take photos for me. i miss the night skies littered with uncountable number of stars. i miss bunking in someone's room at night, playing stupid games like 'zhong ji mi ma', 'cai quan', 'heart attack' and trying to get fy and lg drunk haha. ooh yea i miss the cheap alcohol there too.

so as u can tell, i'm in love, and am currently love sick, to the dismay of my bf, because i've been pretty disinterested in everything else these days. no, u havent done anything wrong, it's just withdrawal symptoms, just like what i told u.

the trip has been good. good in every way possible. it had been fun, definitely. it had been enriching, and i've learnt and seen much. the project hadnt been all smooth sailing, there had been unhappiness, conflicts, and even confusion along the way. things had gone terribly wrong at certain points of time, like when we thought we werent be able to finish the project on time, or when the van broke down midway between the town and the village in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm, or when our snorkelling outing turned out to be a nightmare on the sea.

things might not have gone according to plan, but they were memories worth keeping. they are memories that many years down the road, when we meet again, we will reminisce on them fondly.

i guess the trip has also widened my perspectives of the world, or perhaps more accurately, of life. learnt to look at the larger picture and not focus on the nitty-gritties. there is a lot more to life than..getting good grades, getting a good job, to fame to money to power and whatsoever... there are people who spent their entire lives in the village, and never knew that there's a world outside their little village.

hmm and ya..life goes on..the void returns and once again, i'm trying all means to fill it.

preview of my cambodia experience

most of my photos are taken using qm's camera, since he is the official photographer for the team. looks like he is gonna take some time to sort out the pics..he took like 10k photos in 21 days! haha scary..so here is a little mini preview first..taken using my 1.3 megapixel camera phone..hehe..

in siem reap, the old kropeu school


this is what the entire project angel is all about, to build a new school for the children in kropeu village so as to replace the old one that they have in the photos. i dont even consider what they have now a school. it's more like a 5m by 6m square hut. the tables and chairs are wooden. there is a blackboard in front. one of the walls has collapsed. the roof actually caved in too but someone made a donation so they now have a zinc roof. there are no fans, ventilation is bad and it's freaking hot in the classroom. the floors are sandy and uneven. during the rainy season, the whole place gets flooded and muddy. the children there dont wear shoes btw. minority of them wear slippers.





no canteen, no bball courts, no bookshop, no nothing....you call that a school?? a far cry from what we have back in singapore..



communication was a huge problem because these kids dont learn english.

the skeleton of the new school

thereby began the first part of the project, setting in the foundation of the new school. first digging out the soil on the floor, setting rocks at every inch, then filling it up with soil once again. it's hard manual work under the scorching sun. primitive methods they use..for the most basic technology to us seem foreign in this village. for goodness sake, there isnt even a wheelbarrow! eh will show the completed sch when i have the pics.



perhaps it's the weather...rainbows are simply common in cambodia, nonetheless to city kids like us, rainbows are still the prettiest sight to tired souls.


the kids forming a human chain, helping us transport buckets of soil from outside to the interior of the school's foundation.



my fav kids: from left, Peel', 'Kcant' & 'Kay'...at least i think this is how their names are pronounced lar..they are DAMN cute!! they are small, but very agile and fast, playing catching with them was torturous!


our only water supply on our work site, the well. due to our lack of skill and experience in drawing water from a well, we lost quite a number of pails, but they were later retrieved by the villagers. when we camped at the work site, we built a wooden structure to hold the canvass around the well so it became our bathing area. at night, we literally bathed under the stars. it was very very romantic.........one of the highlights of the trip.

the siem reap wet market

our team was broken up into groups of 4 and we take turns to cook everyday. the cooking group went to the wet market every morning to do grocery shopping for lunch and dinner. it was quite an experience. rows and rows of shop vendors, selling everything from jewellery, bags shoes, pails, cultery, to food stuff like meat, vegetables, fruits...


...and crickets too...GROSS!


bargaining is a must! and it was fun...even though the sun is merciless, the crowds pushy, one gets all sweaty and hot shopping. nonetheless what was rewarding was when we bargained and sometimes managed to get our groceries for cheaper prices. we got to interact with the natives and communicated in khmer. definitely not as comfortable as shopping in a air conditioned supermarket where everything is nicely packaged. no flies all over the place...but it lacks the personal touch, the smiles and interaction with people that made the difference..


Angkor wat



the little girl who spoke good english and sold me postcards. there are kids selling guide books or literature text abt cambodia on the streets everywhere in cambodia..some of them make really good salespeople..usually it's the young ones who make the most, because they are so adorable that they make your heart melt...they stare at you with the big watery eyes looking like pitiful puppies, slowly breaking down the defences of your heart and finally getting to you.







fishing village

houses are built on high slits in this village, during the monsoon season, the entire field that you see above will be flooded, and the water level will rise covering the slits. traps are attached to the slits to catch fish.






isnt she adorable?

floating village on tonle sap river

i cant imagine living in the middle of the lake your entire life..your main mode of transport boat, main source of income fishing, children play in the murky water...the water is really dirty lar..eyoo..probably spolit by tourism and lack of a proper sewage system. EVERYthing goes back into the lake..



sihanoukville, the town by the beach

bamboo island, where we took shelter while waiting for the rain to stop so that we could go snorkelling. picking seashells on the shore..


me in sarong, enjoying a cup of hot chocolate after getting stranded in the rain previously and feeling freezing cold.
taking neo print in phnom penh..

i survived 21 days of cambodia and am finally home.

i miss cambodia already.

cant even begin to tell you all that i've experienced there..so many memorable incident and misadventures..that i think if i were to write all that i've seen n felt, i'll probably take a thousand yrs.

seen, learnt, experienced, touched.

had a lot of fun! the first part of the trip was spent building the school in the village, when we finished the school, we officially completed the project and spent the rest of the days travelling around cambodia, going to phnom penh from siem reap, then sihanoukville, this really nice town by the beach, and then kampot.

probably gonna take some time to adjust back to life in singapore.

pics will come on later!