2011 Mission Trip to Cambodia
from Candice Rose, Graduate Nurse, Class of 2011
We shall call this entry: the bus drive through the Twilight Zone!
Made it to Ratanakiri, finally. Ms. Taplin told us it was only going to be a 9 hour drive, well twelve hours later we climbed off of the bus, bones aching and sore butts!
We should go back to the beginning of the day first… We climb on the bus at the crack of dawn to venture on this grand trip across the rugged roads of Cambodia. When everyone had finally piled on the bus we set off. Taplin had been informed that the roads were in decent enough to travel, so there should have been no problem, right?! Wrong…
We found ourselves at the mercy of the bus driver for the entire trip. The seats in the back of the bus are bigger, so – having not sat back there before, I decided it would probably be best to sit back there since it was going to be such a long drive… BIG MISTAKE! The back of the bus was like riding on that amusement park ride that you first think is awesome but soon realize if you stay back there much longer you might puke! There were times when my butt came at least 6 inches (if not more) off of the seat! Guess that is what I get for trying to take over the “good” seats!

Back to the bus driver… People in Cambodia drive like they are all in the Indi- 500, so when our bus driver was driving abnormally slow and other buses were passing us, some of the impatiences (myself included considering my insides felt like jello) on the bus started asking what was up. Pip (the awesomely adorable Cambodian we took with us as our ad lib tour guide/haggle genius and thank God we took her, she was so necessary) in turn started asking the bus driver why he was going so slow. Every time someone said something to him he would slow down until finally we were crawling along at about 30-40 mph. So then the pressure was really laid on him and he finally snapped! It was like something out of the twilight zone – he would speed up, slow down, speed up… when he finally snapped, he revved the bus so hard I thought I was going to fly into Michael’s lap! Here we are, flying over this dirt road with so many pot holes it looked like Swiss cheese, getting our brains sloshes around and going grey from fear! The bridges were the most terrifying part, wooden, old, could break at any moment… Yep, friends and family, 12 hours, 9 of which were sure madness and we all survived! But the best part of the drive has yet to be discussed… Let’s just say that finding ways to use the bathroom on a road through the jungle in the middle of no where can be quite the bonding experience and I will never complain about a gas station bathroom in the States again after seeing what the Kehmer people live with daily! I have so much respect for their ability to balance.
Blair and I got settled into our room at the Cambodia resort, which literally looked like a secluded jungle paridise, and fell out on the beds from exhaustion. Well, unbeknownst to us, we were not alone. There was a tenant lying in wait for Blair in the bathroom. Oswald, a 3 1/2 inch roach that was as wide as a small rodent, crawled out to tell her that she was in an occupied room and Blair started screaming! Oswald had not expected such a unwelcoming reaction and clung to the basket that held the soap in an effort to make himself invisible. Blair was freaking out, I went into the bathroom, worked myself up, – “you’re hardcore, Candice, you can do this. No roach is going to defeat you, ect.” – grabbed the basket, and carried it into the hallway. Well, Oswald didn’t appreciate it, he took off running full speed ahead at Blair and I, that is when the pandamonia set in. I was screaming, Blair was screaming, had Oswald’s mouth been bigger he would have been screaming! We were all running around like maniacs and in all of the chaos I slammed the door in Blairs face trying to save myself! I don’t believe in karma, but if I did, I would say I fell victim to it! Oswald took off under the door, right back into our room, charging like a freight train directly towards my feet! Oswald escaped that night, but he got his come-up-it’s, that’s another story.
Building relationships, experiencing events that will change you forever, finding pieces of yourself you had no idea existed, and falling in love with a foreign land and people – that is what Cambodia is about!
I miss my boys, the food, and language!
Sorry this post is so late, it was meant for Wed May 25.
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost