We made it to Cambodia!!! After a few long days of travel we are here. We are currently in the capital city Phnom Penh,which is more south, and have been here for 3 days. It’s is currently 5:20 am and I accidentally woke up early so I decided to write a blog to give you all a short update. We are 14 hours ahead of Spokane time which makes communication a bit difficult but other than that I’ve had no issues with the time change. We landed in Taiwan at 5 am, local time, and got to Cambodia around 11 am so we just stayed up until night time that night and woke up the next morning around 6 and was acclimated to this time. Couldn’t have gone better. 

I love it here so much. It’s better than I could’ve ever imagined. The first thing we did as we left the airport was ride a tuk tuk with all of our bags to our hostel which was about 30 minutes away. I’ll put a picture of a tuk tuk down below. The driver is basically riding a motorcycle swerving through crazy traffic with a bunch of other tuk tuks and motorcycles and it goes so smoothly. There’s honking and some stops but the people are so nice here and no one gets mad when someone cuts in or squeezes by them. If this was in the US people would be screaming at each other left and right. I love riding the tuk tuks. They are quite literally the best, most fun form of transportation ever. And they’re cheap. I can get across the city for a couple dollars.  Ok I’ll stop ranting on my love for tuk tuks. 

The streets are all crazy busy with traffic, food carts, dogs, cats and chickens, and no one stops for people crossing so you simply just walk through it. It’s bizarre to me how quickly it became normal. Doesn’t make my heart race or stress me out (so you don’t be stressed either mom). Chickens have become normal to me, I understand the currency exchange. It’s amazing. 

There have been some really hard and heavy things aswell. Different groups of us went to two key points during the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975-1979. During this time over 2 million Cambodians were killed and nearly everybody here knows someone who was killed. We went to S21 which was a torture prison that around 18,000 people went to. We walked through the actual rooms that people we tortured in and room that rows of people slept in all attached at the ankles with shackles. It was the heaviest and hardest thing I have ever seen with my own eyes but it also gave me a better understanding of Cambodian history and how it still affects people today. The other location was the killing fields which was a mass execution location that many S21 prisoners were brought. This was also very brutal to walk through. If you have never heard of what I’m talking about with the Khmer Rouge I encourage you to go educate yourself on it. There is a movie on Netflix that is called First They Killed My Father. They are so sad and hard to watch but we also can’t be ignorant to what has happened in the world. 

We head up to Siem Reap this morning which is a 5 hour bus ride. We’ll be staying here for the next two months so I’m excited to get to know the city and the people in it. I will give updates soon on how that is going. 

On top of this all we have seen God move and be present here. It can be tricky in a county that is 95% Buddhist and only 2% Christian to feel like God is here but there have already been so much evidence of it. I haven’t fully processed through some of the things but I will update later when I do. Just know that God is powerful and can do all things. 

Continue to pray for safety and peace over us all. I thank you so much for reading this and am also praying for you. 

With love, Lauren. 

Pictures are SO HARD to put in these, especially on my phone so next time I will take more time to make the pictures better. My apologies