August 1, 2019
Take two on the presentations! After greatly simplifying our presentations, making translation much easier, we found that the students were getting what we were trying to teach them. What a glorious moment! This was the entire reason why we had come out to Cambodia. After a very successful morning, we met the students that we would be intimately working with and discussed tentative plans for dinner the following evening.
Following our presentations, we had lunch with some of our hosts at the university restaurant. After which our group did a case-study on rabies to refresh our knowledge so that we could hopefully relay it to the RUA students the following week.
Thursday night was an epic odyssey involving lengthy tuk tuks due to breakdowns only to be underwhelmed by the night markets we were excited for. There is always a silver lining as we found another great vego/vegan option in the city in ‘Vegetarian House’ and did manage to get some pretty decent icecream from the market served in a coconut shell with flesh still inside.
August 2, 2019
On Friday we commencing the day with a tuk tuk ride down to the Choeung Ek Genocidal centre. Once at the ‘Killing Fields’ we purchased our tickets and began our complementary audio tour. Placing on our headphone we began to hear the tragic stories of the Cambodian genocide. As we walked in silence amongst visitors from across the world through the lush green gardens it was hard to comprehend the atrocities that had occurred there. It was harrowing to hear the tragic history carried in land, from mounds in the earth to old trees. Though an emotionally challenging visit, the ‘Killing Field’ has been created to not only be an educational centre and but also to remember the lives affect by the genocide and alow the world to learn from history. It also allows foreigners like ourselves to better grasp how resilient and incredibly positive the Khmer people are as a whole.
Leaving the centre somewhat emotionally drained we thought that lunch was probably overdue. We managed to grab a tuk tuk just in time to escape the wet season downpour. We enjoyed a very melbournian style lunch at the cafe Vibe before saying “chumreap lear” (goodbye in khmer) to our amazing supervisor Aash as she had to leave to get back for work.
Then we quickly moved on to heading to dinner with students at a local eatery. They initiated us in the ways of Cambodian hotpot (because it had rained that afternoon/evening and was according to them official hotpot weather). We bonded with this group of students well and really enjoyed their outstanding hospitality. We tried to steer conversation towards research topics a couple of times but were quickly redirected as the students had final exams on the mind. We knew when it was not worth the fight and just settled for helping them with their english and trying to learn a bit more about khmer culture/language.
DVM4 Cambodia Selective 