Macaulay Award 2018 - Laos and Cambodia by Ashviny Srinayagam
Macaulay Award 2018 - Laos and Cambodia by Ashviny Srinayagam
We all met at Heathrow airport on the 5th of July 2018, some of us apprehensive, some of us reluctant to say goodbye to families, but all of us excited. Although not all of us knew each other well at the beginning of the trip, as it went on and we experienced stumbling over each other trying to avoid slipping down muddy roads, playing cards late into the night and exploring new places, it became impossible for us not to become friends.
For three weeks we were going to travel from London Heathrow to Laos and then bus and backpack our way across the border to Cambodia. We arrived in Vientiane in Laos which was a rather quiet town compared to the other places we would eventually visit. It was also a nice surprise to see Mr Atkinson who had flown in from Thailand to see us! We spent the next day exploring and carrying out necessary tasks in small groups like changing money into the local currency as well as arranging our accommodation and transport, as we had to completely take control of the whole expedition as much as possible.
The next day we were on a coach for over 10 hours! The whole day was pretty much spent travelling to Savannakhet and thinking about the first main part of our trip which was our Tansoum community project. Before making the journey, the Tansoum village community had already been contacted and they said that the most helpful thing for us to do would be to help starting to build a new school for the children as well as teaching some English. The villagers were so welcoming, and I am sure all of us will have cherished memories from this part of the trip especially. We saw baby crocodiles, tried fishing and became pros at eating everything with chopsticks. In our free time we played games with the village children who were very affectionate and excited. In the evenings some of the older girls taught us some traditional dances in lovely costumes. We had to make do with teaching them the Macarena and candy but they loved it.
On our final day the villagers had a lovely farewell planned which consisted of us all being dressed in traditional clothing, hair done up and entering the temple which is in the village, to be part of a special ceremony. Then we met in the hall of the primary school where the ex-monks did their final goodbyes to us. All the villagers tied blessed white string up our arms for luck and good health. They also gave us handmade cloths in baskets and some delicious banana rice packed in banana leaves. There were rounds of hugging and waving and then it was time to move on to the next part of our journey. We didn’t expect to be so sad to be leaving them, especially the children.
We made our way to the 4000 islands by boat and stayed on cabins on stilts, overlooking the water. We explored through forests and were attacked by leeches and got caught in the rain but surprisingly we laughed and raced back towards where we were staying.
Our next step was to make our way past the border to Cambodia and into Siem Reap. Here we got up extremely early in order to make our way to Angkor Wat; the largest temple built on earth, to catch the sunrise. The day was spent looking through many temples and trying not to get too lost in them! After the reasonable quiet life we had experienced in Laos, the bustling city of Siem Reap was a bit of a shock, especially the bustling night life while of course managing to still stay up to date with the World Cup. We all dared each other to try a piece of rather questionable food from a food stall and, after splitting up into groups, mine found our way somehow into a drag-queen show.
Our next destination was Phnom Penh which is the capital of Cambodia where we visited the riverside markets. This was a short stop before travelling to Chi Phat in the Cardamom Mountains where we would be undertaking our trek. In my opinion, the journey to get there was far harder than the trek itself! We had to lug our heavy backpacks for ages on foot before being picked up, and six of us had to squash up in the back of a pickup truck in the dark in torrential rain! Needless to say, we got soaked but actually we found this part hilarious. The problem was that the heavy rain had caused the roads to flood, so we had to carry all our luggage and wade through thigh high water in darkness for what seemed like forever. We would have been better off swimming and someone even lost a shoe! When we finally made it to shelter we barely managed to get clean and eat dinner before collapsing under mosquito nets and into bed.
The next three days were spent trekking through the rainforest guided by locals who knew it well. The trek was not as hard as I was expecting, it was probably good that the trek was one of the final parts of our expedition as we had time to acclimatise and get used to all the extra exercise. We saw gorgeous landscapes, slept in hammocks and bathed in a river. On the way back, we even got to ride on the back of mopeds for a bit which everyone really enjoyed. We then spent a final night in homestays in Chi Phat before heading back to Phnom Penh.
Back in the capital we bought souvenirs explored a little on our own and visited the Killing Fields and the S-21 Prison of the Khmer Rouge’s rule which was a very moving experience and learnt more about the history of the city.
I learnt a lot during this trip. I especially learnt a lot more about independence and became more confident in unusual situations. It was humbling to see people so happy in the village with what, to us seemed like very little and I didn’t even miss my phone! I am very glad we spent time helping those in Tansoum as I felt our presence really did make a difference to them.
While I was sort of reluctant for the trip to come to an end, I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again. So came the end of our journey and we headed back home to London, full of wonderful memories and life lessons.
