Welcome to Cambodia!
After 81 hours and 59 minutes of travel from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, we finally arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We left at 4AM on March 3, and with time changes and stopovers, we reached our destination at 1:30AM on March 7. We passed through 5 countries, from the Dominican Republic to the US to Japan to Thailand to Cambodia. It was an insane trip with multiple lunches (as we passed backwards through time, we always seemed to eat around lunch time), many movies, and little sleep.
Let me tell you all about our trip! We really did leave Santo Domingo at 4 in the morning and caught an early flight to Miami. We had to do the customs thing before hopping on a flight to Los Angeles. The flight was smooth and we arrived around 2PM Pacific time. There was no food on the flight, and we arrived hungry – it was dinner time back in the DR! The rest of our team arrived on the next flight, a few hours later. It was about that time that we were told that our teammate Anna had passed out in the Miami airport and was taken to the hospital. We found out she was all right, but she was staying overnight, and Hanna was with her. It was a sad moment for our team, but we had to continue on. We took the shuttle to the hotel/hostel we were staying at, and checked in.
My friend Natalie, who lives in LA, met us at the hostel/hotel. She graciously drove us around the city, to a Walmart and then to a Target. We then grabbed some fast food and headed back to the hotel – we had already been up almost 24 hours! After doing laundry in an actual washer and dryer, we headed straight to bed! We had a long day coming!
Before we kne
w it, we were back at the airport, but this time we were going to be traveling internationally! With some snacks in hand from the night before, we boarded the largest plane I have ever seen – it was a double decker! The flight to Tokyo was long but uneventful. We got to watch some good movies and have multiple lunches. We really had no idea what time or day it was the whole time, it was rather confusing! Somewhere in there we lost a day, too!
I immediately fell in love with the culture (which I knew I would) the second we touched down in Japan’s Tokyo airport and saw the friendly, polite, and smiling security guards as we got off the plane. The people are so respectful and courteous that it makes you feel like you’re someone special. The items in the airport were very reasonably priced, but we only got to stay for a few hours – we had a 7 hour flight ahead of us. Upon reaching Bangkok, Thailand, we were met with 90 degree weather in the middle of the night – the humid kind. We got to take tuk tuk’s from the airport to the place where we spent the night, though! Hooray for tuk tuks! In the morning, I was able to get some breakfast before we left for Cambodia – it consisted of some tea, yogurt, some balls of meat on sticks, and a rice bun with barbeque pork inside. Each item was amazing and tasted even better than I thought it would!
Shortly thereafter a double decker bus was waiting to take us to the Cambodian border. The bus had A/C and a flat screen TV where we watched Indiana Jones! The only unfortunate aspect of this leg of the trip was that it was so short – we were at the border in no time! From the bus drop-off point, we hired some boys to load and carry our backpacks on their wooden carts across the border. I don’t think they had any intentions, but we had to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t get too far ahead!
We were treated to a nice lunch at the border for only a few dollars – it was an all you can eat buffet in a hotel/casino! I got to try a lot of fruits and rice/noodle dishes that I had never seen before – even the desserts were interesting! We finished crossing into Cambodia and were surprised to find no buses waiting for us. There had been a miscommunication, so we had to wait about 4 hours for buses to come. These buses weren’t anything like the ones in Thailand – there was a 
bit of airflow and almost no room. By this point, having slept very little on the plane, I was pretty exhausted! I slept a lot of the way to Phnom Penh, and although the trip took close to 10 hours, I missed a lot of it! We did stop for dinner, which was a fish soup – quite tasty! We rolled into Phnom Penh, our ministry location for the month of March, at around 1:30AM. It didn’t take long to settle into bed, but it took a little while to fall asleep!
So here we are, in Cambodia! I already really like it here. I still don’t know entirely why, but I just love the Asian culture. The tempurature has only one setting though – crazy hot! It always seems to hover between 90 and 100, even at night. No matter where you are, you just sweat all the time. Food is a little expensive here, and we only have $3 a day for food…but that gets us nice Khmer meals, at least for lunch and dinner. Breakfast is usually bread and yogurt! Other than those things, Cambodia is just what I expected it to be. It’s a mixture of an ancient culture and a modern way of life. This is even seen in their Buddhist religion and how they live – there are motorbikes everywhere! They are still in touch with rituals and cultural norms that they have had for centuries, though. On top of that, from young to old, Asians are just cute people. I’ve already made some friends, including a little boy that runs up to me every time he sees me and grabs my pinky finger. We then take a walk in whatever direction I was heading. I talk to him in english, and he just laughs at everything I say, not understanding a word. We part ways when he sees something of greater interest, usually food or his bike, and often with a hello – it’s the only english word he knows, and I think that he thinks it means just about everything.
We were able to visit our ministry site on Saturday, and attended a youth service. It’s an awesome church! They have a full band, with acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, multiple singers, and even dancers – and they are all youth! They turn the lights down, and the church becomes a rock concert with flashing lights and the whole show. The church even stands near the stage and jumps up and down, to Christian rock songs that are both familiar and new. It reminds me of church back home…we just have to get some fancy lighting installed! We’ll find out on March 11th just what we’ll be doing this month. We will be working with this church, but there are many opportunities to help out, from working with youth to medical missions to teaching english to making videos to working on dramas to well…a lot more! I think it’s going to be a really good month for me, I am really excited to be here. Our team is now back together, and we’re ready to show Cambodia some Jesus Christ! I’ll be sure to write back with more stories as I make them…stay tuned!
