Cambodia: Living there

I love this google logo!

How should I start this post? One of the things I did for OCIP in Cambodia was to paint a wall mural for the library we donated. The design of the painting was done by a kid in the orphanage and drawn on the wall in pencil by him as well. A few of us painted it and I have to admit I am proud of our work. (:

So for living, we actually lived in Hope Training Centre which is 15min drive away from Hope Village Prey Veng (the orphanage). We thus, don't stay within the orphanage. The dorm is shared between 12 girls and this is how our room is like:

Blue netting are mosquito nets. Highly useful but warm to sleep in

Near where we stay is vast padi fields. Actually most of Cambodia is make up of vast fields like this:

This is Hope Training Centre where we stayed:

Looks nice here...wait till you wake up to dead insects lying outside everyday

If you are to walk out to the main road aka the one and only road, you will see this:

House like this is considered not bad.

As for my substitute for Gongcha there, it has to be sugarcane juice and ice milk coffee

Love these drinks so much

Non-automated Sugarcane store. They squeeze the cane themselves by turning a wheel. Much force needed

There's also really nice street-side noodles in the market at certain timings which is actually quite unhygienic (since flies were everywhere) but oh-so-delicious.

This appetising-looking dish actually consist of noodles that were attracting flies. Delicious

In Cambodia, I was totally fine with eating food with insects appearing or dropping into my bowl. yes, I would just take out the flying insects, flick them aside and continue eating. Something I wouldn't do in Singapore. Guess when the environment is rugged, you only focus on surviving aka eating whatever that comes and don't complain. (I didn't had food poisoning)

Into the market!

Live chickens for sale

I can't live in Cambodia for long because I can't kill chickens for food. They obviously do not have frozen chickens. There are more stuffs in the market like salted fish, live fish, rows of vegetable produce, duck eggs, chicken eggs... I would love to take more photos but it didn't felt safe carrying a gadget in a crowded area where people are poor. Their produce are really cheap. I can buy a bunch of sweet bananas for less than 50cents. I can even buy a dress in Phnom Pehn for US$4.50 and Tshirts at US$1.50... but that's unrelated to the rural province I was in for OCIP

I guess the most exotic thing I ate fully and really enjoy is this from the trip as a whole is this:

Yummy, a true delicacy. I'm serious about that. If I ever return to place that serves fried cricket as food, I WILL DEFINITELY BUY IT.

I tried a bite of Balut too. Balut is duck eggs with embryos inside- embryos with feather and all.

The bite that I ate was just the hard egg white part. nothing fun.

Miss the exotic-ness. Miss the fried cricket.