For monks, weekends to not exist. Every day is a life of dedication, compassion and helping those in need. Last week neighboring temple Wat Bo has invited our monks in a joint effort to distribute school supplies to a village school outside of Siem Reap. Us volunteers were invited to tag along.
It's always an adventure going on organized mini mission trips outside Siem Reap. First of all, you need to understand that that this is the Cambodian version of a "bus":
Yep.
The Western buses are only for tour buses and long distance intercity buses (e.g. Phnom Penh - Siem Reap). Though luckily, we all couldn't fit so all the foreign volunteers managed to get a van (with AC!) instead.
Let me also remind you that these trips are often organized by monks, who usually don't have the best set of organizational-oriented minds! We met up at 6:30am and it wasn't until 8:45am that we were finally on our way to the provinces to deliver stationary to the local village school. But despite the wait and enduring the bumpy roads to get there, the bucolic scenery of the countryside were absolutely beautiful.
After a trundling hour ride, we arrived in the village school in which all 400 children were standing in the heat, waiting for our arrival despite being a Saturday.
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| Royal treatment greetings |
The thing with Asian countries is that we like to make things real formal when it comes to donation distributions. The monks had a comlete agenda of speeches ready as the kids awaited in agony... but nevertheless I can see their excitement in their eyes.
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| 21st Century Tech savvy monks |
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| The older students giving their thanks on behalf of the students |
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| Organizting the stationary to pass out! |
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| Hold up your new notebooks and pens! |
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| Taking a break and taking a shot with the monks |
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| The monks here sure like to take their pictures, they caught me in this one! |
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| Successful trip. Distributed all the goods to 390 children |
And of course, the best part for us is (free) lunch!
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| Gotta wait till all the monks finish eating, even the little ones! |
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| And finally...chow time! |
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