In round 3 of my fourth year at Liger, I was in the exploration Costume and Set Design. The goal of the exploration was to design the set and costumes for a play that Senior Dalin, who was the facilitator/supervisor of the exploration, wrote for Phare Ponleu Selpak, which is a non-profit art school in Battambang. Later in the exploration, we took a trip to Battambang and visited Phare to work with them on the play. While we were in Battambang, we also went to Sangker Gallery, a creative art space in the city. When we got there, we were given a challenge to find an art piece that we like and write a story for it in a creative way. I worked on the challenge with my good friend Narak, and we chose to write a poem. It is titled “Dystopian Sunset”, and it, along with a picture of the art piece from Sangker Gallery that we picked, can be found at the bottom of this post. The poem can also be viewed on Google Docs here: bit.ly/3mX3y4M. I had quite a wonderful time in Battambang, working with Phare, visiting Sangker Gallery, and writing about one of the art pieces there. Overall, I enjoyed being a part of this exploration. And I hope you enjoy this poem!

“Dystopian Sunset”

Narak & Panharith

Our world was beautiful

free of corruption and greed.

Everything was balanced.

Life was free of humanity’s domination.

 

The second they step foot in this utopia

the lands became drained of peace.

Instead, the world was filled with misery and despair.

We became hopeless and helpless.

 

Slowly, our world started to crumble.

Ruination was brought upon us all.

Our homes became destroyed

and there was nothing we could do about it.

 

The givers faded to ashes.

The blue giant went grey, lifeless.

The invincible dome cracked.

Everything turned into waste.

 

We sat and watched

as they continued to bring detriment

upon us all, but also themselves.

We laid, lifeless and, with our last dying breath,

watched the dystopian sunset.

We watched the world end.

At Liger, there is a project called LMRT, short for Liger Marine Research Team. Having an explanatory name, LMRT is a project consisting of 8 members, senior Liger students, who are interested and passionate about the ocean in their own unique way. These individuals came together to form the research team for one main purpose: to help Cambodia’s ocean. In achieving the big goal, they conduct research, surveys, and work with other organizations and conservations to identify and solve the problems Cambodia’s ocean is facing. As this is the last year for the seniors, they are spending much of their time getting ready to graduate and leave Liger which includes the 8 senior members of the research team. Regardless, LMRT is an important project that needs to continue due to the fact that Cambodia’s ocean still faces many harmful threats today. So to ensure this project continues, 8 junior students came together to form the second generation of LMRT. And I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to be one of those 8 students.

To be able to continue LMRT on our own, we, the second generation of LMRT, needed to get ready first. For round two, we had an exploration that was designed to prepare and give us the necessary knowledge as well as key skills needed to keep LMRT going. With the help of our experienced and beloved senior LMRT members, we learned from them the Open Water Diver (OWD) course by SSI (Scuba School International). One of the many things we will be doing later is conducting surveys underwater, which is a very important part in marine conservation. In order to do that, we must know how to dive; hence we took the OWD course. The site we will be working at is Koh Seh island in Kep province in the southern region of Cambodia. The organization that works on the island to protect Cambodia’s ocean is Marine Conservation Cambodia, MCC for short. The first generation of LMRT has been working with and learning from them for a very long time and we will do the same. At the end of the exploration, we took a trip to Koh Seh for our dive certification which includes dive training and the exam. The OWD course and exam was very hard and challenging. In addition to there being just so much information, everything we were learning was new, so it required extra practice in our own time to get ready. Nonetheless, we all completed and passed the exam. I’m extremely proud of myself and everyone for achieving this task. The rest of the trip was very productive and fun. We got to meet many new people and do a lot of new things in the ocean. It’s an experience that I won’t forget. Overall, the exploration was a time full of learning and it was a great start to this project.

Before I was in LMRT, I felt like marine life was less cared for than terrestrial life and that there weren’t as many marine conservation efforts as terrestrial conservation efforts. The reason for that was that I was simply uneducated and unaware of what was being done to help the ocean. I knew most of the major problems and threats of the ocean, but not what was being done to try and solve them. Not only has being in LMRT broadened my knowledge of the numerous issues the ocean is facing, it has also introduced me to many threats I never knew of as well as amazing marine conservations and scientists who are trying to protect the ocean against those threats. I know now that the ocean faces more problems than I think, with new ones arising everyday, but I also know that there are people who love the ocean enough to be willing to fight for and protect it against those problems.

Being in LMRT has changed me in various ways as a person who loves and wants to protect the ocean. It has helped me understand that everything we humans do everyday has an effect on the earth including marine life and the ocean. On the first trip to Koh Seh island in Kep for our dive certification, one of the many things we did was beach cleaning. Every so often on the island, there would be a beach clean-up because there’s trash like plastic that washed up ashore at different parts of the island. To me, the island isn’t very big compared to other islands in the archipelago, so it is easy for us to spread out and collect waste. While I was walking on the southern coast of the island, in the parts that we don’t normally work at, and picking up trash, I realized a lot of what I was picking up could be reused and recycled to help the environment instead of just sitting on the coast polluting and destroying the waters. Today, that realization makes me really think of items I buy and how I use them to be more careful and make sure that they don’t end up in places like the ocean, where they could damage the environment. This way I can help protect marine life and their habitat without having to be there which is a thought that truly fills me with glee. It is something that has grown within me since being in LMRT and I’m thankful that it has.

Going into LMRT, I didn’t know what to expect because I thought the opportunity to work with people who share the same passion as you was already exciting on its own, so I didn’t really carry with me any expectations when I started. Now having been a LMRT member for a while, I can say that everything we do with each other is just great. Everyone is unique. The fact that we all love and are passionate about the ocean is what makes everything so much better. It is what connects us as individuals together when we work. We’re all teachers and learners and we help each other out all the time without any problems. This also applies to the people on Koh Seh. Even though I spent less than a week on the island, I already felt like there was a strong bond of friendship between us. For the entire time I was there, everything felt so welcoming. I guess I can and would like to say that being a part of this project just feels warm because you’re constantly surrounded by amazing and lovely people who are there to support and offer you help at any time. It is really wonderful.

For the time I’ve been in LMRT, there is so much we’ve done with each other and there is even more that I believe and know we will do and accomplish. As one of the many personal goals I have moving forward, I aim to get to know everyone in this project better and build upon the connection we already have into something greater. I also desire to improve and become more immersed in swimming and diving in the ocean. The past few months being a member of this huge project with lovely people has been truly enlightening and I hope for the years ahead to be so as well.

Yesteryear, students of the second cohort here at Liger, usually called Juniors, all underwent a round of an exploration of Outdoor Leadership; we all received training to become outdoor leaders and environmental stewards by our wonderful facilitators here at Liger. They say “sharing is caring”, so this year, that’s what we’re going to be doing: we’re going to be sharing to other people our knowledge and skills of outdoor leadership, so they, too, can become outdoor leaders and environmental stewards and protect this wonderful country.

The ultimate and main goal of this project, Cambodian Youth Outdoor Leadership Program, is to create young Cambodian outdoor leaders. This first round of the project was focused entirely on the method we’re using to create outdoor leaders and the following rounds will follow everything that is done in this round as it finalized the main ideas of this project and the way we are going to carry it out. Aside from that, the succeeding rounds will contribute to attaining the goal by translating the plans into Khmer as everything will be done with Cambodian students and actually creating outdoor leaders.

Students in different parts of Cambodia, especially rural parts, will be selected and trained under the workshop we will have created halfway through this school year. The workshop will be centered around five main categories, each offering a unique set of skills and knowledge not taught in Cambodian government schools: Leadership, Medical Health, Risk Management, Nature Appreciation, and Wilderness Skills. In the process of achieving the big goal and before Cambodian students can protect the environment, they must first learn about it. After having learned those things, they will go on trips into the wild and put what they learned to use and display outdoor leadership. At the end of the whole “course”, they will be required to start and work on a mini project to raise awareness about the environment – sharing their knowledge acquired during our workshop – and create change of their own in the place that they live in.

I enjoyed tremendously being a part of the first step in creating young outdoor leaders of Cambodia. The training we, students here at Liger, received last year was very educational and made us think in many new ways of the environment and we would like to share that knowledge to the rest of Cambodia’s youth so that they can also help protect the country’s environment. Summing up, I’m excited to see the change this incredible project will create throughout this year.

I thought that I’d camped in the wild before, but that had occurred to me as false when this exploration came to be in round 3. The students from this exploration last round had talked about their trips repeatedly after they ended, about how amazing they were. And that made everyone else want to be in this exploration.

I, too, was excited for my turn to be in the exploration. What I had expected was lots and lots of trips, but there was more to it than that, than just going on trips and having fun. There was more. And that all changed and became clearer when I took part in the exploration of Outdoor Leadership.

The first week of exploration, we went over the guidelines. One of the guidelines said “Play hard, play well, play fair, and play safe,” and that was one thing I kept in mind throughout the exploration. Then we got an introduction to Outdoor Leadership, the exploration, and started on lessons.

Two out of three main goals of the exploration as said by our facilitators were “We want you to involve yourselves more with nature and just appreciate what it has to offer,” (reworded by me). I was particularly happy about those two goals because I did love nature and two out of three goals being ones that aimed for us to love it even more made me – put in the simplest way – happy or happier. The other goal was to learn how to survive in nature or rather, how to become an outdoor leader, which is why this exploration is called “Outdoor Leadership”.

At times in the exploration, we did an activity called “Sit n’ Spot” which is almost exactly what the name says: you sit, you spot, you think, and you write. This was basically an opportunity to observe and sort of appreciate nature and write about it.

The lessons in class started off with simple things about walking outdoors and camping, then got longer and more informational as the exploration went on which I was very thankful for but, not too keen about, and I did acknowledge that they played important and essential roles in camping trips.

Some lessons talked about the three basic needs when going outdoors which were food, shelter, water, and some lessons talked about being cautious when trekking out in the wild and some others taught us how to build a fire. We covered a lot. At the end of the second week was when we talked about our first trip which would happen on Wednesday the week after.

A beautiful park in Kampong Speu called Kirirom was where we were headed on our first trip. We spent two days of learning there with an additional one of sitting on the bus, traveling. One of the things we learned before the trip really started was how to ‘go to the bathroom’ when camping. The goal for that trip, I think, was just for us to get used to walking long distances and practice some of the skills we learned in class. And that’s what we did, we walked, or more precisely, trekked, a total of about 30 kilometers, which is about 30,000 steps; 20 kilometers on the first day and 10 on the second.

The first day, we went to a place called “The Heaven Cliff”. It was a cliff high up the mountain and was known for its view. On the way up there, we got lost a few times, but we did our best to bear with each other and I was proud of that. The mountain was covered with trees, nature, and it was just beautiful.

The cliff was beautiful and the view was amazing and we saw lots of cool birds, too, mostly hornbills. We camped at the cliff for the night and left the morning after. We also did a Sit n’ Spot there before we left.

Our second campsite for the second day was a big lake all the way back down the mountain. The area was surrounded with big tall pine trees and it looked more beautiful than the last campsite in my opinion. We woke up with a beautiful sunrise at the lake and then we left. This was a great first trip and I had lots of fun and learned a lot, too. Two weeks later, we would go on another trip which was harder and really tested the knowledge and skills we learned in class.

In class two weeks before our second trip started, we learned about the more complicated lessons and things about being outdoors which included scary medical scenarios and how to save a person’s life. We were headed to Mondulkiri and we would spend 2 days of learning there and two additional days on the bus. Our one and only campsite, the one we would sleep at every night, was located at Resource Development International (RDI), a non-profit organization.

The first day, we trekked to two waterfalls and walked through a grassland which took us about 25 kilometers and it was extremely harder than last trip because of the steep and rocky terrain. We were going up and down mountains and in forests.

The second day, we went to another waterfall and it was just as hard as the last two. There, we learned how to make a soup made by the Pnong (indigenous) people of Mondulkiri. It was called the “Proung” soup and it was made entirely out of vegetables, hence very healthy. The way it was cooked was interesting, too; it was cooked over a fire in bamboo.

Lunch was amazing. And even though the soup didn’t look appealing, it tasted really good. We had the soup along with fish and pork cooked over the same fire.

We had Sit n’ Spots and activities throughout the trip. The activities included saving a person’s life and building a shelter. That second day, we walked about 15 kilometers. So we walked about 40 kilometers in total. The moment this trip started, I knew it was going to be my favorite because our walks were longer and the nature there was just beautiful, despite the difficulties and terrain.

Before this exploration started, I had thought that I knew what it was like to camp in the wild, but really, it had been false until this exploration. Even though we didn’t really camp at the waterfalls we went to or in the forests, I could tell how hard it was just by trekking through them which was extremely hard.

Throughout the exploration, I feel like I’ve changed a lot in terms of being an outdoor leader. Even though I didn’t enjoy the long lessons in class, I was grateful that they were taught to me because they were very important and could probably save a person’s life one day, if I ever decide to go out trekking with friend. Those lessons made the trips we went on way much easier than it would’ve been without them. At times when we, including me, were eating on trips, people changed from “I haven’t gotten food yet” to “Have you gotten food yet?” which is, to me, a big change. Being an outdoor leader is about sticking and working together in the wild, making sure everyone is okay, thinking about others first, and bearing with each other when we got lost or faced a problem. It’s also about knowing how to survive in the wild.

I was a bit sad when we went on the two trips because sometimes, I saw trash everywhere which was harming the environment and no one was doing anything about it. But we aren’t like those people who just walk over them without doing anything, we picked up the trash and made the place better, saving the place.

To all those out there, please, be careful of where you throw your trash because it can have some serious effects on the environment. Well, that’s it from me about this exploration. I had lots of fun as well as learned a lot and I loved being in Outdoor Leadership. Also being an outdoor leader. Lastly, I wish the people of Outdoor Leadership good luck, it’ll be fun and exciting!

Second round, second exploration and that exploration is Traditional Foods. I’ve always loved food. To me, it is one of the best things in life. There have been times where I loved food so much to the point where I wanted to become a chef, so this exploration was really exciting for me. Evidently enough, the goal of this exploration was to learn about Khmer Traditional Food. But the main focus of learning about it was to find stories and specialties.

In first few weeks, we discussed and identified what traditional food is, looked at restaurants in Cambodia that cooks Khmer traditional food, and split into groups to send those restaurants an email about a visit, so that we can learn from them. There were many restaurants, about 6, but the restaurant I sent an email to was called Malis. Not all of the restaurants replied to everyone’s emails, but the restaurants that did were Mahob, Cuisine Wat Damnak, and The Sugar Palm. These restaurants were all in Siem Reap and they all cooked Cambodian/Traditional Khmer Food which was, as mentioned, our focus. Later on in the exploration, we would go on a four-day trip to Siem Reap to go to those restaurants.

Splitting into three groups that were based off photography, videography, and journalism was what we did after. I was in the journalism team with 3 other students and the rest were either in the photo team or the video team. The duty of each team is already told in their name; the photo team is responsible for photos, video team’s the same, but with videos, and the journalism team’s responsible for writing down information we gather. After splitting into groups, we needed to learn about photography and videography to prepare for the trip that we would go on two weeks after. Then the journalism team decided to set up a blog for our exploration. Then came the trip.

Four days to spend in Siem Reap. What would we do? Go to the restaurants and gather stories and information related Cambodian or Traditional Khmer Food of course. The first day, on our way to Siem Reap, we stopped at two places, A famous market in Kampong Cham, Skun and a shop on the side of the road that sold bamboo sticky rice. Stopping at those places gave us the chance to collect information and interview people. When we finally got to Siem Reap, we spent the evening going to a market near our hotel, Psar Krom. We split into groups and went to different parts of the market. My team interviewed a steamed pork bun seller and a porridge seller, both of the sellers each had their own uniqueness.

The next day, we went to a place that made rice noodles, a famous dish in Cambodia. Then we went to our first restaurant, Mahob. The name “Mahob” translates into food in Khmer which to me, indicates that it cooks Khmer food. We met with the owner who is also the head chef, got a tour of the kitchen and restaurant and interviewed the sous chef. The restaurant was quite nice and I could see its adaptation of Cambodian tradition.

Second to last day, third day, we spent our morning going to our second restaurant, Cuisine Wat Damnak. This restaurant is really different from the many restaurants that cook Cambodian/ Traditional Khmer Food because it’s run by a French Chef! And I was inspired because the way they cooked their food was really unique and cool. Since I was in the journalism team, I was responsible for writing about the places we went to and at the end of this blog, you can find the link to our blog which contains our products! Like the previous restaurant, we got a tour of the restaurant as well as the kitchen and we interviewed the chef. We spent the other half of the day at the hotel completing our duties, organizing our photos, videos, notes, and work on our products.

Our last day, fourth day, we went to our last restaurant, The Sugar Palm. This restaurant was also unique and different. It was run by a Cambodian woman who spent most of her life in New Zealand. When she came back to Cambodia, she found her love for Cambodian/Traditional Khmer Food and opened a restaurant. She used her family recipe for the food that they cooked which the public likes. She showed us the restaurant, kitchen, how to make one of their famous dishes, Amok and we got to interview her. Then we spent the half of the day traveling back to school.

The last few weeks of the exploration was spent finishing up our products. I really enjoyed being a part of this exploration because it taught me things that I didn’t know before, exposed me to a different part of the world, made me love my country’s food, and just inspired me. My perspective of one thing changed, too and that one thing is that Cambodian food and Traditional Khmer Food is two separate things, not one. What’s the difference you may ask? If you want to find out, then go visit our exploration’s blog and find the article about Cuisine Wat Damnak written by me! I included that in the Cuisine Wat Damnak article because the chef, specifically, was the one that changed my perspective and inspired me! Summing up, this was a great exploration and I had a lot of fun being in it and I also hope to be in another like this one again.

Exploration Blog: http://khmercuisine.ligeracademyblog.org

Note: The articles I wrote are titled “A Market of Diversity and Significance” (It’s about Skun) and “There aren’t 1000 ways to breathe, but there are 1000 ways to eat.” (It’s about Cuisine Wat Damnak). Thank you!

If you haven’t read my “Changing Cambodia 2017-2018” post, I highly suggest that you do so to avoid any confusion that you might have and fully understand what is happening in this very post of my learning. The first exploration of this year was a continuation of a project that was created last year, the Cambodian Geography Book. It was the last exploration that would finish the entire project. In this last part of the project, we had two new students join us on finishing the book; we had 10 students. We spent the first few weeks putting all the provinces in Cambodia together and going over the content. Before our last school year ended, we met and came up with an idea that not only would make the book more interesting and exciting for the readers, but also input our students’ voice inside the book. The idea was to turn boring sentences into visuals that would give them as much information as reading it. These plug-ins were called graphics and there were four types of them which were student/explorer’s observation, did you know, watch out, and traditional beliefs. You can already tell what they are by their names. Throughout the 7 weeks, we met with our facilitator every single week, set goals, and talked about how we were doing on the book. We also came up with new ideas to improve and change the graphics due to some small problems. For the last few weeks, we went through all the designs as well as the content one last time, checked for consistency and changed a few things. That was the longest process of making the book and it was really frustrating, but we made through it and I’m proud of everyone in the exploration. The book will be printed somewhere around the end of October or early November before 2018 ends, but despite that, I cannot wait for everyone to pick up and read this book. It was created by 12 year old students from the Liger Leadership Academy for the world to read and know about Cambodia. Honestly, this was a great start to the rest of the year and I really enjoyed it.