I forgot to mention that yesterday, we finished our tour in a really nice restaurant where streetchildren are taken in by a nice couple of Northern Cambodians, fed and lodged, and they get to work in the restaurant to help out. At the end of the supper they all decided to come sing and party with us, because one of the members of the group had had her birthday celebrated with a very special cake. It was quite a sight to have all of us dancing, foreheads covered with sweat, on a terrasse along the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh, along with very happy Cambodian children singing... Jingle Bells!!!
Today was another race day, after our 'off' day yesterday. We started at yet another orphanage ran by restaurant owners since 2004, where they teach the kids the traditional Khmer dance along with school, English and Japanese. During Pol Pot's brutal communist regime, around 2 million Cambodians were slaughtered in the killing fields, most of whom were intellectuals, guardians of the culture ie. dancers and artists, and educated people. So it turns out that very few people are left to teach the traditional Khmer dancing. One of the legacies is that the street addresses in Phnom Penh are not at all in order - number 124 could follow number 33 follwed by 543. Thankfully this particular orphanage, called NCCLA (New Cambodian Children's Life Association) has the resources and the children have been on tour dancing in Japan and elsewhere in the country. We, on the other hand, had to entertain them and teach them something by singing and mime; Vini and I picked the Passe-Partout song 'Brosse, brosse, brosse, j'me brosse les dents' and handed a few toothbrushes along the way. I had had some training dealing with such kids in Peru in 1994 and it all came back. I also was not surprised at all to see lents in most kids' heads, to our poor Aussies' dismay :).
More about the NCCLA can be found on their website: The New Cambodian Children's Life Association.
Then we had to race through Phnom Penh the rest of the afternoon. The 4 of us teamed up and did the course, which involved the museum, the market and... eating bugs. My dad had mentioned that he'd eaten grasshoppers when he was a kid and well, now I know what it feels like! 10 points were awarded for any bug - bamboo worm, locusts, grasshoppers, coackroaches... and 30 points were awarded for black spiders. All insects are like, deep fried or baked, and really only taste crunchy. I was able to take in 10 locusts and Vini the same number, and we ended up the wimpiest team!!! PV crunched into a bunch of locusts as well, and Rob took 3 spiders! Kudos to him!!! Photos are here to prove it.
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