Friday, June 7 Last day


We officially made it to our final day in Cambodia! We met up a little later after our very long and activity-filled day with the temples and the circus. We got back to morning meditation, health check-in, and the way of the day. Today was a big transference day. We mainly reflected on all of the places we have been and everything we have experienced and learned, bringing significance to the trip as a whole. We got into groups of four, each group creating a poster of one of the places we have traveled to. We covered everything in Chambok National Park, Phnom Penh, Koh Pdao, and Siem Reap. After sharing, we grouped up in a circle and passed a big ball of crumpled papers around while Mony simultaneously is telling us a story of tourists (our group) traveling through Cambodia, and every time he mentioned one of the four cities we visited, the person holding the paper ball would take one piece of paper off the ball. Each paper had a question on it and helped prompt reflections of the trip as a whole. We continued the story until we completely disassembled the paper ball.


Later we headed out to Mony’s favorite restaurant for a lunch of noodles, eggs, pork and fried vegetables. We also got to try Mony’s favorite dessert called bong aen with bananas and beans. After lunch we spent a peaceful afternoon at the botanical gardens where we wrote our final reflections about the trip which two of us will share at the dinner on Sunday. Most of us headed to the cafe in the gardens to write for some coffee and a table on which to write. In our letters we reflected on our overall experience in Cambodia, the challenges that we faced throughout the trip and some of our favorite moments. At the gardens, we also wrote cards for all of our guides thanking them for the wisdom they gave us.


In the afternoon we headed back to the retreat center to conclude our session about international development that we couldn’t finish on Koh Pdao and we discussed the different questions we had written about the unequal wealth distribution across the world. We also had an inspiring talk with Sister Denise who founded the retreat center that we’re staying at. She has done so much work for Cambodia, including reconciliation after the Khmer Rouge, the demining of forests across the Thai-Cambodia border, and the documentation of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia. She told us that there are many people in Cambodia (close to 700,000) whose great grandparents were Vietnamese but moved to Cambodia and that these people are not able to get citizenship or documentation from the Cambodian government. Unfortunately, the Vietnamese government doesn’t want them either so they are in a state of statelessness. Sister Denise also won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in demining! She passed the certificate and medal around and we got to take pictures with it.


For dinner we went to a vegetarian restaurant and ate noodles, tofu and, of course, rice. We also got to try the best ice cream in Siam Reap (according to our guide Claire)! We ended the day with a special ceremony of gratitude. We are looking forward to coming home tomorrow after such an eventful and exciting trip through Cambodia!


  • Sophie L. and Cameron










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