Skwishi Smith
Skwishi was created in honor of Phides Chibuye in Zambia. Phides’ life was cut short so Skwishi travels and has adventures for her.
Since Lonely Planet has better writers, I hope they don’t mind me borrowing their intro to Romania: “Traveling in Romania, the EU’s newest member, is like being somewhere between an eternal Halloween and the Led Zeppelin IV cover that features a twig-carrying farmer. Even in cities where Audis zoom across highways under video-camera speed traps, Romanian life is defined by its sweet country heart. Most anywhere, you’ll spot horse-drawn buggies crossing the (often cratered) paved roads – up green mountains, past cone-shaped haystacks and herds of sheep – which bounce along as if the roads themselves are aliens to the land. And then there’s that Dracula thing. Many visitors, lured by bloodcurdling tales, make full trips out of Transylvania’s castles and lovely medieval Saxon towns like Sighişoara, where the ‘real Dracula’ (Vlad Ţepeş) first grew his teeth. But travelers limiting themselves to chasing vampires will miss so much.”
Unfortunately, we only had 5 days so we limited ourselves to Transylvania. We had decided to take Tracy’s mom on our next doll delivery trip (more here) and thought Romania would be a great choice in a few ways. One, the problems of their institutionalized orphans has been well-documented. Two, we read about the scenic countryside, and three, we love mountains and Romania is blessed with lots of them.
We’re not much for big cities so as soon as we landed in Bucharest, we picked up our rental car and headed for Brasov, a small city in the middle of Transylvania. Brasov made a real nice hub from which we branched out each day. The nice thing about renting a car is you can explore the countryside and find those off-the-beaten path areas that we love. And Romania, or specifically, Transylvania did not disappoint us. It definitely lives up to Lonely Planet’s description. Fortified churches, medieval castles, Saxon villages, horse-drawn wagons, beautiful mountains and farm fields, cone-shaped haystacks… We saw it all. It’s what we imagined Europe to be like 40 years ago. It’s quaint and charming yet still has most of the comforts of modern life and is definitely not overrun with tourists. The only thing that was somewhat disappointing was the food. Of course, we travel on a limited budget so we don’t always try the best of food, but we did get tired of the ubiquitous pizza on every Romanian menu. It seems to be a post-Communism rage there. I don’t know if this phenomenon is in any way related to the fact that the Romanian language sounds a lot like Italian.
We left thinking we’d love to go back someday and spend more time. Of course, we also want to explore so many other places that we haven’t already been so we’ll just have to see.
We only had 5 days and we weren’t making any headway getting into one of the large institutional orphanages. We were in a small town called Prejmer and Tracy saw a sign for a clinic and thought it was worth a try. Luckily someone spoke English and believe it or not they just happened to know of a small home for orphans a few blocks away. A young boy guided us there on his bike and inside the gate we were surprised to find Casa Mea owned by Jan, an American. At the time there were only about 5 children, 4 of which were girls. Jan had started coming to Romania several years before with a church group and volunteering in some of the state-run orphanages. It wasn’t long before she decided to sell everything she had at home and move to Romania full-time. Through some tough times and a lot of hard work she now has a beautiful home for these children and she’s hoping to take in up to 12. The children are given a family environment in hopes that they can grow and thrive. After sharing experiences for a while with Jan we gave our beautiful rag dolls to the girls and we had some other toys for the one lone boy. They were all so excited. We have since heard from Jan that when they venture from the home the girls can’t go out without their dolls.
We didn’t bring many rag dolls to Romania to give away, but since Casa Mea was small we still had quite a few left. With the larger orphanages not an option open to us we decided to try another tack. Romania has lots of gypsies. Most are rather poor and are viewed as second class citizens. While sightseeing earlier in the week we had driven by what looked like a poor gypsy village on the outskirts of Brasov. We had no idea of how this would work, but we drove up to the edge of town and saw a women pumping water from a well. She had a little girl with her so Tracy got out and motioned her over to the trunk. She pulled out one of the dolls and the little girl’s eyes lit up. In no time other women and children came rushing out. We had no problem giving away all the dolls and toys. The first woman we met was so grateful that she led us back to her home. It was very modest. Barely more than a one room house and she had four children. She didn’t have much but she invited us in and offered us a drink. Not knowing the language we could only smile as she held her hands over her heart in a sign of thanks.
No matter how hard it seems to be somehow it almost always works out. We usually find some children who are grateful to receive a gift of love from a world away.
Our experience with Cambodian means of transportation began as soon as we crossed the border from Thailand. The road was sometimes paved but more often a mix of dirt and gravel and in a continuous state of construction. Driving on the right is recommended though not strictly adhered to. I can only imagine that the cabs that regularly run this route (about 140km) must have to go in for suspension repair every couple of months. In that 3 hour cab ride, I think I lost all the benefits of the 3 Thai massages I had the previous week.
Over the next week we marveled at what Cambodians can transport on a bicycle, pickup or motorbike. I swear I counted over 25 people on one pickup truck, not to mention their belongings. I wish I had pictures of everything we saw, but since we never knew when to have the camera ready and were usually in shock or hysterics, my weak attempt at describing what we saw will have to suffice. After a while, nothing really surprised us, but the pickup truck with the (live) horse in the bed did amaze us. So did the 2 motorcycles strapped on top of a whole bunch of luggage in the bed of another pickup. Some other things we saw on motorbikes – 3 50lb. sacks of rice with one between the driver’s legs and 2 stacked on the seat behind him, on top of which his buddy was balancing; dozens of dead chickens hanging by their necks; 2 dead pigs; 2 guys carrying a car door; families with the father driving, a kid between his legs, his wife on the back carrying a baby, all, of course, with no helmets or any straps of any kind; all kinds of stuff strapped across the back of motorbikes which seemed to defy the laws of gravity and, at the very least, required a very wide berth. If only we had had a video camera!
I wish I could put into words how the traffic flows there. It really is something to sit back and just watch for a while. You have to realize, first, that there are as many, if not more, bicycles and motorbikes on the road than there are cars, and they often don’t stick to their side of the road. At an intersection it’s like a dance, a weave, or 4 streams coming together. There’s no neat orderly progression of vehicles waiting for their light to turn green. In fact, most of the time there’s no light. From the outside it seems like chaos, but it’s not. And, it works…somehow. If someone coming the other way is turning left and you’re going straight, they don’t wait for you to pass. They turn as if you weren’t there. And you don’t slam on the brakes and hit the horn. You simply go around them to the left, or further to the right if that works better. If you’re crossing heavy traffic, you don’t wait on your side of the intersection for the other traffic to clear. You venture out into the middle and the cross traffic veers around you – on the left or right – until you reach the other side. The key is, for the most part, everyone keeps moving. If you were carrying 3 50lb. sacks of rice and your buddy on the back of your motorbike, you wouldn’t want to stop either.
If you’ve read this far, you probably have a nagging question in the back of your head – “Why Cambodia?” Two words – Angkor Wat. It’s believed to be the world’s largest religious structure, built in the 12th century if I remember right. At least, that was our initial motivation, but as we read more about the country we just felt it would be more intriguing than Thailand. We had also wanted to do some volunteer work on our trip and thought there’d be more of a need there. We hooked up with a woman named Ponheary Ly our first morning there. Which brings me to our second harrowing experience in Cambodia. Ponheary had no sooner picked us up when she collided with 3 kids on a motorbike. Her car just got a broken headlight, but the kids got a bit scraped up. We learned an interesting thing about accidents in Cambodia – that you have to settle things before the cops get there, otherwise you have to help “pay their salary”. A nice way of saying that they don’t get paid enough so if you don’t give them some money they will impound all the vehicles involved. So $15 later everyone was on their way.
Let me back up a bit. We had actually arranged a meeting with her by email first after finding her organization (www.plf.org) on the internet. She helps Cambodian kids with supplies and uniforms for school. The school is free the first 6 years, but the supplies and uniforms are not. Many families can’t afford the $20 it cost for a year. When she asked us what we wanted to do, we warned her that we weren’t teachers. Her response was, “Well, you speak English, don’t you?” We soon realized why. It was the first year the school had an English program and we figured out real quick that of the eight teachers who taught English, 3 could speak it OK and the rest didn’t come up with an excuse fast enough to get out of it. So we spent 3 days, 7-11am and 1-5pm, in 95 degree heat with 98% humidity, with no A/C, with classes as big as 40+ kids trying to teach English using a book that was written for Euro teens in the 90s. Do 10 yr. old Cambodian kids really need to know what country Leonardo DiCaprio comes from or that Anna Kournikova is/was a tennis player? After the first day I wanted to quit. And Tracy had a hard time trying to come up with a good argument why we shouldn’t. Mostly, we didn’t want to fail after just one day so we went back for more punishment the next day. And by the 3rd day we were getting the hang of it despite the horrible book we had to work with. We were also totally exhausted at the end of each day. But, I think both of us would do it again in a heartbeat. I don’t think we’ll ever forget 35 kids yelling “Teacher, me! Teacher, me!” There were some shy and quiet ones, but most of them really wanted to learn.
Back to those two words – Angkor Wat. Siem Reap used to be a dusty little city with nothing, but now it’s a dusty little city with huge hotels and lots of bars and restaurants. You can find a $10/night guesthouse or you can pay upwards of four or five hundred dollars for a luxury place.
Actually, there’s not just one temple, there are whole complexes of temples with the “jewel” being Angkor Wat. It started out as a Hindu temple when the Angkor empire was Hindu. Then in the 16th century or so it was used as a Buddhist monastery. Today it, and all the ancient temples, are ruins, though many quite well-preserved, and are used mostly for tourism. Some people spend a week going through them all, but we hit the highlights in a day. Angkor Wat is amazing not only for its sheer size, but also for all the detailed stone carvings it contains. My favorite temple, though, was Ta Prohm, which some of you may have seen in the first Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie. Bad movie, cool temple. It has been overrun by the jungle and the trees now seem to be as much a part of the temple as the stone it is made of.
Not far from Siem Reap is one of the largest lakes in SE Asia, Tonle Sap. It is the lifeblood of central Cambodia. There is actually a large community of people that live in a floating village on the lake. Well, they do in the dry season when the lake level is much lower. In the rainy season the water level can rise as much as 30 feet or so and the lake is about 2/3 larger than in the dry season so the people have to move inland. We really wanted to go out and see it despite it being a bit touristy and harder to get to since we were late in the dry season. Another week or so and I don’t think the boats could’ve gone out of the harbor that we went from. Some of the boats were already getting stuck. They have most everything a normal village does – gas stations, restaurants, schools, a basketball court, and even a Catholic church. It just all happens to float.
We saw quite a bit around Siem Reap but we both felt we’d love to come back and see much more of the country and the people.
We had been in Siem Reap for nearly a week and were leaving Cambodia in another day. We had gotten a few suggestions of places to deliver the dolls but none of them quite felt right. On our tour around Angkor Wat Ed had noticed a sign for an orphanage, but we didn’t know exactly where it was. So we hired our favorite tuk-tuk driver to take us there. We somehow got the idea across to him of what we were looking for and he acted like he knew what we meant. “Sign language” is a beautiful way to communicate. But, when we got to where we thought it was he kept driving. We started to get anxious but stayed patient and waited. Several minutes later he pulled up in front of a rustic building. We walked up, and sure enough, it was an orphanage for about 50 kids. There was a young Cambodian man who came out to greet us. In perfect English he explained to us that he grew up an orphan himself and now lived here helping to raise these kids. The COSO orphanage had been started a few years earlier to help take care of orphans and other children whose families are just too poor to raise them. The need in Cambodia is great and the government just doesn’t have the resources.
The young man took us on a tour of the two-room building, complete with outdoor kitchen. The ones old enough all go to school and take English and other lessons right there. The kids bathe in the lake across the street. They don’t have much, but it is more than what they had before. We wished we had had enough dolls for all of them to get one of their own, but judging by the room they all slept in, we could tell that they were used to sharing. We had barely given out all the dolls before the girls, and boys, were already taking off the dolls’ clothes and swapping them, redoing their hair and having a ball. We knew we had found the right place. It’s a great feeling when it all comes together.
If you get the chance to go to Thailand you might want to avoid April, the hottest month of the year. Unless of course, you want to join in the lunacy known as Songkran, or Thai New Year. Like many festivals these days, what started out as a solemn religious festival has turned into a 3 day party. The original idea was to sprinkle yourself, others and statues of the Buddha with water as a cleansing ritual and to gain merit for the new year. Now, you walk through the streets eating and drinking in the middle of the world’s largest water fight. 
We spent our first night and the next day in Bangkok, which turned out to be fairly tame to what lie ahead in Chiang Mai. Sure there were supersoakers everywhere in Bangkok, but in Chiang Mai there were tons of people riding around in pickup trucks with garbage cans full of water in the back soaking anyone within reach. The amazing thing to us was that they didn’t seem to get tired of this after 3 days and we didn’t see any fights break out! Most people just laughed and smiled.
Chiang Mai is a central starting point for a lot of excursions into the country side so when Songkran finally settled down we signed up to go on a canopy tour. These have become all the rage wherever there are an abundance of trees in the world. You climb up onto platforms in the trees, hook into a harness and glide through the tops of the trees on a zip line. Tracy and I had both been on one before but it was still pretty cool. One of the guys in our group was over 300 lbs. so I figured if the cables didn’t break with him hanging on them, they weren’t going to on me. Not a bad way to check out the jungle. 
The woman at our hotel tried to con us into going on an overpriced tour of an elephant conservation center and an orchid farm but we had our hearts set on going to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center about an hour from Chiang Mai. Getting there wasn’t a problem. In Thailand everyone always asked us where we were going. Most of the time, they wanted to make a few bucks taking you somewhere in their cab, bus, tuk-tuk, etc. So when we got to the bus station we just waited ‘til they started asking and it was no problem. We wanted to go here because they help rehabilitate sick or injured elephants. They also train mahouts (the elephant trainers), and supposedly don’t make the elephants do silly things like play soccer. Besides, they also make and sell elephant dung paper and it’s not every day that you get to see that. One hokey thing they do during the show is have 2 elephants paint pictures. We were assured, however, that the elephants really enjoy it. Maybe they find it therapeutic and stress-relieving. What do I know! All in all, it was a cool place that we would both recommend. 
Getting back from the elephant center turned out to be quite the adventure. A few people had told us that you can take a bus that runs regularly, but you have to ask to find out where to catch it. Well, after asking several people we felt quite certain that a bus would come along at some point, and we were pretty sure we were waiting in the right spot, but after waiting for 45 minutes or so we were beginning to wonder. I finally said to Tracy, “If we were in Chiang Mai or Bangkok, about 50 people would have asked us ‘Where are you going?’ by this time.” Sure enough, about 5 minutes later a guy walked up to us and asked, “Where are you going?” Turns out he was going back to CM with his family – all 10 of them along with their belongings in a pickup truck. After we figured out he didn’t want any money, and he reassured us it was fine with him and the rest of his family we hopped in the bed of the pickup. We realized after a time that he was just a friendly Thai guy who wanted to practice his English. It’s not easy carrying on a conversation in the back of a pickup going down the highway, but we managed to have a modest cultural exchange nonetheless.
We had read great things about getting a Thai massage and were dying to try it out. After riding in the pickup truck for over an hour we decided it was time to indulge ourselves. Thai massage is quite different than what most people in this country know as massage. First of all, you’re fully clothed. Second, it’s intimate in the sense that they use their feet, arms, elbows and sometimes most of their body weight to stretch, bend, press and twist your body farther than you thought imaginable. Third, it can actually hurt and is certainly not relaxing during the process. But, when you’re done, you FEEL like you’ve had a massage. It is nirvana. At $5 ($4 if you’re a repeat customer) it’s the best deal on the planet!
Food was another big part of our adventure, whether it was finding some really weird stuff or tasting some amazing culinary delights or trying to figure out what the heck that weird-looking fruit is. What we really wanted to do though was to take a Thai cooking class. There must be a dozen cooking schools in CM. We picked the one that our guesthouse manager recommended and we were quite happy with it in the end. We went to the market, cooked, and ate for 6 hours and even I was stuffed and fully satisfied at the end of the day. Truthfully, I think the meals we cooked were some of the best meals we had on the whole trip. It wasn’t too hard when you had someone telling you exactly how and when to do everything. 
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet are the temples (or wats). Oh my God I’ve never seen so many statues of the Buddha in my life – reclining Buddha, happy Buddha, you name it. And every street seems to have at least one temple. I don’t ever want to hear how Catholics are crazy with all their cathedrals and statues of the saints. To be honest, I thought some of them were beautiful, especially the more simple ones, but most were a bit gaudy and I didn’t care too much for them. 
Like most places I’ve visited, there are beautiful sights and interesting places but it’s the experiences you have there and the people that make the trip. Tracy and I both just like learning about and experiencing other cultures and Thailand was no exception.
Chiang Mai is a crazy place around the Thai New Year, Songkran, and we arrived right in the middle of it. Picture giant water fights, people driving around in pickups with 55 gallon drums of water and buckets, more super soakers than you’ve ever laid eyes on. And it lasts 3 days! When the mayhem settled down, and we had done some sightseeing we knew it was time to find a place to deliver the handmade dolls we had brought with us from the States. It was Ed’s first trip to deliver dolls so he was a bit nervous and not quite sure what to expect. The woman at our hotel wrote down the name and address of an orphanage right in town so we hired a driver to take us there. Some of the kids were out playing in the yard. We were greeted by a nun who worked there and we told her why we had come. She took the dolls and said they would put them in the girls’ rooms for later. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see the reactions of the kids, but our experience in Cambodia a week later more than made up for our disappointment. They did, however, invite us to stay and play with the kids outside. Tracy had told Ed that it might take a while for the kids to warm up to us and she went over to a group of them to try and play. Well, a short while later she turned around and to her surprise she saw Ed giving an “airplane ride” to one of the little ones. And, there were more chasing him to get their turn. Before long it was time for the kids to go inside for a nap and we took our leave. Things don’t always turn out the way we hope, but at least we were able to spend some time with the kids and let them know that someone cares.
Rosio, 4 year old daughter of the family I stayed with in Peru. Her kindergarten class received dolls.
June of 2007 I went on a GAP Adventure trip to Peru. I had just gotten divorced and wanted to travel but was nervous about going by myself. GAP was perfect. We hiked the Inca trail 5 days and ended up at Choquequirao ruins, volunteered at a children’s center in Cusco, visited Machu Picchu and helped out in a mountain village for several days. We stayed in locals homes and I volunteered at the school.
The kindergardeners had so much fun with the dolls. The boys played “army men” with them and the girls tied them up in sweaters on their backs. Later in the day we saw a woman with a baby on her back and one of my students was walking with her and had her doll on her back. Cute!
