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Leavin’ on a jet plane…

Posted by Andrea on (Updated: )  |  Leave a comment

I always get a bit nostalgic when it comes time to switch continents. The truth is I love both my homes and in Cambodia I miss the calm of my Truckee house, and the girls in my Truckee office, but when in Truckee I miss my staff and friends in Cambodia and the constant adventures that happen while living in Southeast Asia. With Saturday and our flight home approaching fast I pulled some of my favorite moments from the last eight months, it made me realize…we’ve been busy!

October:
We left snow covered ground in Truckee and headed back to the tropics. The kids were more than happy to get back in the swing of tuk tuk’s and chicken feet:

October Back to Cambodia

October Eating Chicken Feet at a Wedding

November:
Couper turned two along with Sabai and we had a great visit from my parents. I also had a busy and rewarding trip to Laos to visit hotels, try out some new tours and visit the JWOC language school. I ended that trip with a visit to Bangkok where I went to a Salsa competition (as a spectator):

November Birthday Cake

November Visiting Luang Prabang and the JWOC school

December:
A busy month at the B&B, but Brandon and I managed to sneak in a trip to the farm in Koh Ker and Callie was in her first (we imagine of many) performance:

December, Romantic trip to Koh Ker

December At the school Christmas Party

January:
A busy month for JWOC with a documentary being filmed on clean water in Cambodia. I hopped over for a weekend in LA for a Nikaya Trade Show and we enjoyed a family night at Angkor Wat. The month ended with a fun mother son and nanny trip to Phnom Penh:

January Working on A Drop in the Bucket

January Nikaya trade show in LA

January Night Tour At Angkor Wat

January Phnom Penh with Couper and Mom

February:
We had a new class of scholarship students at JWOC, our biggest class ever, but I had to take a trip to Bangkok to bid a fond farewell to Thailand Director Waew:

February Working with a new class of JWOC scholarship students

February In Bangkok for Waew's goodbye party

March:
Narla graduated! and we took a much-needed family vacation to the beach enjoying Phuket, Koh Phi Phi and Krabi and ending with some time in Bangkok:

March Narla graduates

March Thailand Beaches

March McDonalds in Bangkok

April:
After celebrating the Khmer New Year Callie and I decided to head North to Chiang Mai where we tried out a new elephant experience and some new hotels, a great mother daughter trip for us:

April New Years BBQ dinner

April In the tuk tuk in Chiang Mai

April Mahout Training in Chiang Mai

May:
This month has been a blur, we delivered sewing machines to the prison for our new program for Nikaya, we did a spur of the moment trip to Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh for Mother’s Day and we have the Grand Opening of the new JWOC Center this Saturday!

May Delivering sewing machines to the prison

May Mother's Day trip to Sihanoukville

This doesn’t even touch on the amazing guests and volunteers we had and the huge leaps the kids have made in school and swimming and just growing up in general. It’s been a fun time and I am looking forward to summer in the states and then back for more soon!… Read more »

It's Good to Be Two

Posted by April on (Updated: )  |  Leave a comment

Couper and I took the boat from Phnom Penh back to Siem Reap this weekend and while I generally think being 2-years-old looks frustrating, this was one time I was jealous of his time in life. We boarded the boat at 730am at the Phnom Penh Pier…for me this was ridiculously early, for my little friend who is up at 6am without fail, this was a fun outing. Walking down to the boat on the slippery steps my heart was in my mouth, Couper on the other hand reveled in his 2-year-old oblivion and enjoyed the extra squeeze I was giving him. Once on the boat my seat felt a bit cramped and I wasn’t convinced by the view. Couper had plenty of room and if he stood on the seat also had a great view out the window at the other boats and birds. For the first couple of hours of the trip this is what he amused himself with, bird watching and boat pointing. By the time we got the Tonle Sap Lake and the boring part of the ride commenced Couper made himself comfortable and fell fast asleep. I attempted to sleep, but the vibrations of the boat made any head-rest rather jarring!

Couper woke up as we started getting closer to Siem Reap and he and I ventured outside to watch the boats and birds in the fresh air. He loved this and, rather than worry about the harmful UV rays beating down onto his tiny, perfect nose, he waved to the birds and locals out fishing. At the dock on arrival the sea of tuk-tuk drivers that descended on us just amused Couper and, unlike me, he at no point thought we might end up in the lake…in retrospect he probably would have thought a swim was a lot of fun too.

We were running late so got to have lunch in town at a nice restaurant where the waitresses fussed over him. All in all, not a bad day of boating for a 2-year-old.

An adults perspective: When the words “death-trap” and “boring” enter your mind you know it isn’t the ideal form of transport. With that said, the views in the beginning and end are fun and the middle isn’t as bad as the bus. Most tourists sit on the roof thus arriving in Siem Reap looking like lobsters, those that stay down below suffer the consequences of mild claustrophobia and stuffiness. The ride takes about 5 hours and if you tap into your inner 2-year-old it ain’t so bad 🙂

couper-enjoying-the-boring-part-of-the-boat-ride-its-good-to-be-2… Read more »

Helping others has never tasted so good!

Posted by April on (Updated: )  |  Leave a comment

Friends Restaurant in Phnom Penh has been on our itineraries since we started 6 years ago and it, and thankfully us, are still going strong. We ate at Friends this weekend and here are the top five things I love most about it:

 

  1. The raspberry vanilla smoothie. Couper drank all of mine so I had to get another one, he drank a lot of that one too, he has good taste.
  2. That your water glass is ALWAYS more than half full because the trainees are hawk eyed and one sip does not go unnoticed.
  3. All the staff are former street kids learning valuable skills so they can get jobs out in the community.
  4. The chairs have big cushions on them so are really comfortable.
  5. The Friends store next door sells fantastic clothes (I may have bought my new favorite black dress, but don’t tell Brandon…recession and all!)

 

Bonus: The food, well it’s fantastic! The cashew nut chicken is my favorite and the portions are perfect so you can fit an appetizer, main and dessert!

dscn0494… Read more »