Our flight from Winnipeg left at 7:45 am on June 3rd and took us to Vancouver by 8:05 (B.C time). After a 6 hour stop over, which we killed by drinking margaritas and riding the walking escaltor (there was more than 1 shot of tequila in the drinks...) we were on our way to Seoul, Korea.
During the 11 hour flight (which for Maria has easily been the longest 11 hours of my entire life!) we watched 5 movies, slept and ate the worst meals in existance..ok we're being dramatic...but really they were terrible. Seaweed soup tastes exactly as one would picture, fish guts and salt!
When we touched down in Seoul we were greeted by a worker who took us immediately to our terminal. Apparently we lost 50 minutes somewhere and had to board our plane quickly. After another 5.5 hours we arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The humidity hit us like a bag of hammers right off the plane and Maria looked like the Grandma off of Beverly Hillbillies when she was given electric shock therapy!
We were met by a woman named Svenja who is from the organization and taken directly to our host families house. While on the drive to our host family we were quite overwhelmed as there were several prostitues hanging out near the airport - brothels were scattered around. Luckily our host family is far away from this area.
Our host family is fantastic! Mami (pronounced Mommy) is hilarious and even slapped Maria right in the belly the first night as their culture is very hands on - she is so so funny! Mr. Savuth works at a car dealership which would explain why there is a car parked in the living room after work...seriously. They have two nieces living with them and they do the cleaning and such. Meals are great, however we had no appetite until today because of the extreme heat and humidity. There is also another volunteer at the host family who has come in extremely helpful. On Sunday, she showed the ropes and took us around the city.
Today we had our orientation with Volunteering Solutions and met lots of other volunteers mostly from the U.S. We had lunch at a market and did a bit of shopping and bargaining which turns out is quite fun. The people are fantastic, the market ladies that we bought our stuff from were very friendly.
The major lesson we learned today is to not flush our toliet paper which happens to be pink (Debby - it reminded me of home when I saw the color :) ). We learned this the hard way...read between the lines...anyway though now we know.
Stay tuned for more life lessons from Cambodia we will bring to you,
Maria and Kelly
travellers abroad.
Which one of you flushed? lol
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