Never Forget Cambodia - Alex ponders his last few weeks in Siem Reap

There are a lot of things that I don’t want to forget about this trip. Even though I know that it’s inevitable that I will forget a large portion of it by the time I’m home and will be unable to recall everything I’d like to at a moment’s notice, I’m still holding onto the hope that my memory will hold out more than I give it credit for. My naivety concerning this topic is reflected in my travel journal, where my initially constant updates have become significantly less constant over the past few weeks.


Some of these things that I never want to forget include the way the students light up when they answer a question correctly or recall a difficult word, or the way I feel when I see a student of mine and notice my excitement mirrored in theirs. I don’t want to forget Mitch’s quick one-liners and Alex’s commendable dance moves, or Christie’s explanations of how bogan she is (and every so often adding an “oi, you” into the conversation to drive the point home) or even the way Sally comes back with a new purchase daily. I never want to forget the way the owner of Jasmin Lodge laughs or the way the director of SHCC talks and I don’t want to forget how excited Sochea (a teacher at SHCC) gets when you fall for one of his many pranks. I don’t want to forget any conversation I’ve had with anyone while over here and I never want to forget any of the countless moments where I have been truly, genuinely happy doing something that I have dreamed of doing for years now.

In the last few weeks we’ve been busy cramming in everything we had previously missed – Battambang with Hak (the manager of Jasmin), cooking classes and birthday parties, a Wedding to attend on Tuesday, Sangkheum students’ soccer matches, dinners out, additional trips to Blue Pumpkin (a brilliant, though completely westernised, icecream store) and completing as much work around our set placements as possible. At SHCC this means that Mitch has completed his paving, the bridges are all complete, the fish ponds are almost finished, we’ve scrubbed all the classrooms clean from top to bottom and have now begun to paint. The Jay's School volunteers have managed to clean out all the rooms which had an astronomical build-up of dust, dirt and useless paraphernalia cluttering the already limited space available in the past few days, ready to begin painting. The Sangkheum girls have been preparing for upcoming tests and weekly soccer matches with the students, and have managed to discover a new breed of animal which is supposedly a pig mixed with a dog, which they ‘fondly’ refer to (as fondly as you can refer to a pig-dog) as Pog.

With only two weeks to go everyone has finally begun their independent travel planning (something which has been put off for as long as possible, apparently) for post-antips and their last minute shopping at the markets, it’s all feeling as though it’s drawing to a close – I’m still not sure how I feel about this.