The history, hardship and new beginnings...
Women Embrace Adventure has partnered with Lake Macquarie-based Restore One Charity since 2018, raising much-needed funds and bringing groups of like-minded women together to travel and work at the Restore One School in Cambodia. Last year our team proudly raised over $28,000 for the school, offering a hand up out of abject poverty and creating generational change in one of the poorest places in the world. Here's a snapshot of the first few days of our October 2023 Embrace Cambodia Cultural and Volunteer Adventure...
Day One: Australia to Phnom Penh, Cambodia
We arrive at the airport from near and far, 13 ladies who have done amazing things in preparation for this trip of a lifetime. Some old friends, some new, we embark on this journey as individuals but will come home as a cohesive group with bonds made over discovery in a foreign land.
Our group doesn't know it yet, but they will come home changed. Changed in the most brilliant way for travel with outstanding women always yields stunning results. They'll look at the world a little bit differently, will deal with their stresses and challenges a little better for they will realise we really don't have many worries at all, except the ones we create with our striving, our keeping up with the Jones, our want for more...more stuff, when all we really need is community, family and love. Cambodia and its people will teach us they are the ‘rich’ ones, and we have so much to learn...and remember.
Let the adventure of a lifetime begin...
We arrive in Cambodia after a long flight. It's nighttime, and the humidity hits us square in the face. That Southeast Asian smell—food cooked on open fires, petrol, diesel—hits as well. Ah, so good to be back!
Sokuhn, Operations Manager Restore One Cambodia (and all-around amazing human), greets us at the gate; it's been a long few covid years since we last met; big hugs all around. We find our tuk-tuks in the hubbub of the busy city nightlife; it's loud, it's crazy, it's full of zooming motorbikes and honking horns, and a tad overwhelming but so very exciting.
We speed through the streets, four to a tuk-tuk, to the oasis of our lovely hotel, to be met by Tanya, founder of Restore One Charity and our guide for the next 15 days. We are greeted with a cold towel to wipe our sweaty brows and cool lemongrass tea to sip as we are checked in. A calmness settles over our group. Things are going to be ok, after all...
We meet for a late supper on the rooftop deck, getting to know each other a bit more over a drink and enjoy our first taste of beautiful Cambodian food and hospitality. Tanya briefs us on our adventure ahead, so very exciting!
Day Two: Phnom Penh
Part One-warning disturbing content
We are thrown into the dark side of Cambodia...it’s the history of the genocide. It's a day of huge emotions, from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs. We board tuk tuks and head to Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre, the killing fields, one of the over 300 known throughout Cambodia.
The Democratic Kampuchea Regime, headed by Pol Pot from April 17, 1975, until January 7th 1979, was responsible for the unthinkable carnage brought upon the Cambodian people, the effects of which are still very present today.
We walk through the rolling green lawns, a deceiving parkland with fruit orchards from the past that in 1980 were excavated to find many mass graves. The area pockmarked and undulating as the decay continues to this day.
Tests on the bones found here determined who died and how. Among the estimated three million Cambodians slaughtered across the country between 1975-1979, nine westerners were also killed. One Australian, two French and six Americans were found here...as the rest of the world turned a blind eye.
Every day, the volunteer staff who maintain the centre, find teeth, bone fragments, and cloth still emerging from the ground. Some are left in place; others are brought to the Chedi, a monument stupa built to honour the dead. We stop at the tree where speakers hung, blaring music over the area to disguise the screams of innocent victims; it still stands tall with its beauty at odds with the horrors it has witnessed. Standing near the killing tree, whose horrors are simply too horrific to write about here, where the youngest victims lost their lives as their mothers looked on, we are hit to the core with the atrocities that rocked this country.
As we headed out to our next destination, Tanya tells us that we might find this place even more confronting and distressing than the last one.... a hard thing to fathom.
We arrive at a grand old high school that had been converted into a prison, now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and S21 Khmer Torture Museum. Known as the place people enter but never leave...out of 20,000 Cambodian prisoners who came through the doors, only 11 were known to survive. The black-and-white photos of the prisoners who were tortured for days and weeks before being sent to the killing fields will haunt us forever.
We pay our greatest respects to the people who lost their lives here and are starting to understand the history and the reality of the Cambodian people. We leave quietly, taking time to debrief and reflect on our shared experience over lunch.
Part Two: Some Lightness & Celebration of the next generation
We're very fortunate to be invited to cruise on the Mekong River with a group of 20 Restore One High School graduates who now study University in Phnom Penh. What an honour it is to meet these bright young humans who have overcome all odds and made it to higher education.
Most of the students are the first in their families to have any formal schooling
We listen to the stories of their lives in the city, sharing a room with nine others, taking turns sleeping, and using the one laptop they have between them for university work. It's extremely difficult for them to live away from their village and study. They all have to work while they study, university is expensive. None complain; they are so very proud to be a big part of the Restore One School success stories.
We tell our stories, the students practice their english, so much better than our Khmer, share a delicious meal, sing, dance, and laugh while fireworks explode over the river.
If this group of young adults is anything to go by, Cambodia’s future is bright, all made possible by the Restore One School. Our team has raised over $28,000 for The Restore One Charity to help educate more children to follow in their footsteps and rise out of poverty. We will be heading to work at their school in a few days.
Day Three: Phnom Penh
Part 1-Sewing Project Visit
Ok, we are staying in the posh posh section of town, our hotel spoils us...cocktails by the
rooftop pool, international breakfast buffet overlooking the city, luxe. We love it to pieces.
But sometimes, the reality of hardship and the irony of our ‘easy life’ hits you square in the face.
We are privileged to be invited into the home of Vanak, the leader of the Restore One Sewing Project, where we see first-hand the struggles people face to support their families.
Vanak, a house-proud lady, explains that her family of five lives in this one room, which is the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and business headquarters.
She cares for her two children, her disabled husband and her sister while overseeing the other ladies in the sewing project.
Against one wall is a sewing machine, her workstation, where she sews tea towels, tablecloths, aprons, etc. to make a living and provide for her family. There are 15 of us crammed into this room, their home. A glass cabinet is neatly packed with pots, pans, plates, and cutlery. On top of the cupboard are stacked sleeping mats for the floor, their beds they take down every night. There is a curtained section in the corner for a toilet and personal cleaning.
The parents, their two children, and all their belongings live here. The ladder leads to an opening in the ceiling, to another room on top where her sister's family live.
Vanak's family home is much improved since we first visited in 2018.
There are now tiles on the floor where dirt once was, the path to the home is now paved where mud once was, and there is electricity (sometimes) where darkness once was.
There is a micro business where sweatshop factory work once was.
There is hope where desperation once was.
Vanak and her team meticulously sew all the Restore One Merchandise you might have seen on some of our adventures, all available directly from the Restore One Australian website:
Tanya and Sokhun from Restore One Charity, along with visiting teams like ours, have helped give people like Vanak and her family living in poverty a hand up through projects like this.
Part 2: Honoured Guests
Our guide Sokhun Prok and his wife, Kimlang Sokhun, invite us to their beautiful home for lunch. What an honour it is! We are welcomed by a beautifully set table (with restore on tablecloths, of course) and receive a very warm welcome. Kimlang and her sister prepare a delicious vegetarian feast with coconut curry, roasted eggplant, garlic green beans. The passion fruit soda is refreshing in the heat and the mangosteens and logan fruit a special treat for us all.
Tanya and Sokhun share funny stories of how they met and how these two amazing humans started the charitable foundation together. The Restore One product range is on full display, and a shopping frenzy ensues; Christmas shopping is done and dusted!
We head to the village tomorrow to work at Restore One School for the next five days. Our ladies are very excited to meet the children and see the projects we’ve raised money for!
We are heading back to Cambodia in October 2025, join us for your own trip of a lifetime. For more information Click Here
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