All Jumbled Up: Making the world a better place

The question was 'If you have a million dollar, how do you spend it?'

Buy a house
Buy a car
Put it in the bank
Dump it in investment
Pay off my entire loan
Give some to my parents
Go on a vacation
And if there's any left, donate to charity

Do the responses sound familiar? In reality, i wonder how many people would really donate to charity if they had a million dollar. Maybe they will take the million dollar to make another million and then there's no ending to it. When they really DO donate to charity is when they want to escape from the taxes.

a local taking a bath in lake tonle sap

Charity was not new to me because i was ~~forced to be~~ exposed during my college and university years. they brought us to old folk homes, orphanage and run down homes. I still remembered when i was assigned to spend two hours talking, sharing or helping them just to make them happy. I suck at such stuff because it was hard for me to open up to strangers i just met five seconds ago. luckily the old man was talkative and all i had to do was sit and listened to his eighty years of life stories. i know then there's no way i could help charity in the form of moral support which need human touch. The only way to do it was in monetary form.

Handling a boat is like walking on the road except the road is the lake

When i first started working, i told my mum that i wanted to support a cause. She suggested a few organization but i cant make up my mind on which that i felt most in need. All the organization had their fair share of good cause. Then i started thinking to myself, why dont i start at home and move on with the flow. Medication are expensive these days. I tried giving what i can afford to my grandma. Although my grandpa left her with pensions but there were bills to pay, house maintenance, living cost and etc. which i think the pension money cant cover. That is one cause that i will always support no matter how my salary turn out to be.

stopping by for a gossips. life in tonlesap.

Nowadays when i see anybody in hardship, i just help out the best i could. The only one that i dont help are the people who are young, fit, with two hands and feets, 5 senses still intact and beg for their living. These people are not worth helping when they have the ability to earn a living but they didnt use it.

floating houses in tonlesap

When i was traveling in Cambodia, the people are so poor there. They lived in wooden house with minimal necessity. There's no proper sewage system. they drink, bathe, wash clothes, take their dump and even buried corpses all in the lake of Tonle Sap. Dont be surprise if you find them scooping out the water from the toilet bowl to bathe. Electric supply was limited to the outskirt. The more outskirt you are the more expensive they charge. People in the outskirt cant afford and when night came they had to live in the dark just relying on the light shinning from the moon.

happily singing songs

The country is still in a recovery state from after the war. The best part was they never beg for their living. They will try to sell you postcards, paintings, crafts, artwork, books, clothes and anything you can think of. Cambodian are hardworking and smart especially the children. Children as young as four years old were well converse in English.

all the kids at the orphanage

There was one girl that was trying to sell me postcards. I ignored her like any other kids and continue to walk to my van. She eventually gave up persuading me to buy her postcards and started a conversation with me. I was curious on how broad her English can go, so i talked to her. Surprisingly for a six years old Cambodian, her English was very fluent. She even invited me to her house which was at some village. Before i left, she handed me a letter (which i think was a school assignment) and ask me to keep it as a souvenir. I rejected at first because i was so scared she was going to ask for money if I accepted it. After much convinced, I accepted it and ended up buying postcards from her. She was sweet and smart; I definitely think she deserved a better life. She was just the tip of the iceberg, how about the other one million of smart and talented Cambodian kids.

36kgs of rice on william's shoulder. 72 kgs of rice could only last for a month. They depend mostly on rice as their source of energy.

If you ever travel to Cambodia, do your part by just helping them. A packet of oreos, a bar of kit kat or just one mentos sweet can make their day. According to the guide, donations in the form of books, food and clothes are better than money because once they learn they could get money from begging, they wouldn't want to go back to school. I learned that an average of US3 is enough for a Cambodian to survive for a day. Imagine buying a book at US5 could save a person's life for a day and a half.

source of water at the orphanage. This is the only picture i took of the orphanage compound. the condition of the place was too depressing for me to continue to snap.