One day trip through the countryside searching for a volunteering

Remember in an older post about our wish to travel Asia, I already wrote about the volunteering project. My idea was to do this volunteering in a school for underprivileged Cambodian children. After some searches on Workaway few months ago, in Lisbon, we decided to take care of it later.

Finally in Cambodia we realized, at first, that our visa is only for one month. As we wanted to travel through different towns it was impossible to find the time for a volunteering. We were also not enough informed about the possibilities of visa extension. We started to consider a volunteering in Vietnam instead, as we will be close to the Vietnamese border once in Laos.

But I was still wandering if there was other solutions to make it in Cambodia.

As we chose to stay longer in Siem Reap, the volunteering idea became stronger and we started to inform ourselves about the visa conditions. We found out that to extend the visa for 30 days more you need to go to an agency who sends your passport and your request to the capital, Phnom Penh. You will have your passport back 3 working days later with your new visa. It costs 50$.

We could believe again in the Cambodian volunteering !

We were helped by the tuk tuk driver who brought us to the Temples of Angkor and who knows that a new school just opened in his village at about more than 30 km from Siem Reap.

That's why today we're in this same tuk tuk driving farther and farther from the bustling town.

On the way to the village, we cross signs from some schools with written "volunteers welcome !". Anyway, we head to the school our tuk tuk told us without stopping.

It's really far and the red earth road is less and less flat. The landscape is simply breathtaking. Cambodia countryside has something undeniably singular, a vibe which makes you feel happy. As I wrote often, the colors are astoundingly warm, and so are the people. The oxen walk proudly in the streets and fields, the dogs run everywhere, families of chickens search eternally for more food, the crickets never stop to sing and the people are smiling again and again. The women grow their own vegetables and herbs gardens, the children have their fun waving their hands while screaming joyful hellos to you.

A deep feeling of what harmony truly is.

We drive until we finally see the school. A big house at the road hides a wide terrain with five huts. There's no children as it's around noon.

We first meet the director and have a kind of interview. He agrees to take us as volunteer English teachers. Happy, we ask for the conditions of our stay. We have to pay 70$ each per week. We'll sleep in our own room in the house we saw from the road. The school serves us three meals per day and bottles of water. We'll have to teach four hours per day (8 am to 10 and 2 to 4).

In front of him we feel kind of obliged, and without taking the time to think we accept to start the next day.

After the lunch with the nine other volunteers already there, we start to deliberate. Our first point is that 70$ per week is really too expensive. We understand it's for our accommodation and a donation for the school but looking at the place we do not see the money at all (9 volunteers who already payed in advance for a stay of 1 or 3 months...). Besides the wish to teach underprivileged children, we also need a volunteering to save money, which doesn't match here. Our second point is that this school seems to be always full of volunteers. As we heard, some people book their volunteering at this school something like one year before via internet. This two points make us feel ripped of and completely useless. The third and last point is we gonna teach only 4 hours and what then ? To describe you the location, we're in the middle of nowhere. Looking around us there's just huge fields until the horizon. Even the small village itself is far from the school, and the way between has no streetlight.

We leave and visit the family of our driver. We meet his wife and their two sons. They live in a house which looks like all the others in the countryside. Everything is out of wood, the first floor is closed with a "door" and some "windows'', the ground floor is completely open as it's in fact the outside space under the first floor carried by few poles. During the day the people live in the ground floor.

Then, we head back to town and ask our driver to stop at some schools on the way to compare. Maybe we can find something where we feel better than the first school.

We stop at some, but it's either the same price of 70$ per week per person, either there's no English class, or we find the children waiting for the teachers who are just not coming sometimes.

I start to feel hopeless. I felt better in one of the schools than I felt in the first one, but it still not as I imagined it. I understand that I made an ideal out of nothing and now I just can be disappointed.

Still driving back to Siem Reap and after some stops in schools, our driver sees a sign. It's the one we saw when we left Siem Reap this morning. We decide to give a last try without expecting a success.

The school is called Kidtea. We speak with the director and finally say a real yes. We'll start the next Monday and stay three weeks (it will cost us 40$ the room per week).

We are so enthusiastic and released. We found it ! And it sounds great !