Anyhow, here’s the link: Gapminder. Hope you find it interesting!

The only things left to blog though, thankfully, are how beautiful Cambodia is and a bit about Vietnam. Shouldn’t take to long. So, let’s get down to it!

Firstly, Cambodia is an incredible country. I wasn’t there for very long, but a 12 hour bus journey through the country was a pretty good opportunity to savour the delights of the Cambodian countryside. My lasting impression of the place was ‘greenness’. The foliage of the UK, whilst undeniably pleasant, doesn’t even compare to Cambodia in its richness. The endless seas of rice fields, stretching as far as the eye can see, are a sort of lime-green, vivid and shocking, like nothing you would ever find here at home. The plants sway and dance in the light breeze as the coach becomes a metal ship, sailing through a verdant ocean of plants. Oxen dot the landscape like rocks, muddy brown and grey against the brilliance of the backdrop. Trees with thick, succulent leaves surround the fields, and the picture is finished by the rice-pickers, knee-deep in water, straw hats and all.

[Going to finish this post later. I'm shattered at the moment. Bloomin' Jetlag!]

Angkor Wat is stunning. Everything you would ever imagine. Huge. Ancient. Mysterious. Overgrown. Overwhelming. Intricate, yet rugged, and looking like a set straight out of Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider (sort of because it is…). If you can go, please do. It will take your breath away.

The best part about the temples wasn’t the scenery, though, but the company. When you’re travelling about on your own, one of the brilliant things is the ease with which you can strike up conversations. The bus to Siem Reap was no exception, and I ended up getting to know the three Koreans who were sitting close to me (Kyo Ri, Jun Sic and Ah Young). They could speak a little English, but despite the (significant!) communication barriers we became friends. Granted, a lot of the chat seemed to involve laughing loudly at jokes we weren’t quite sure we understood, but they ended up staying at the same guest house and travelling around Angkor Wat with me, which really made the trip. I mean, the temples are great and all, but there’s something beautiful about experiencing their ancient majesty with new friends, especially friends from the other side of the world! I’m incredibly glad that I was sitting next to them on the bus (thanks God!), because getting to know them was without a doubt the highlight of the day. Hopefully we’ll stay in contact!

I think this trip, just like any other, has been marked not by the new food, sights or sounds (though they have been great), but by the people I’ve shared them with. Be it folk from church, from work, my hosts and their friends, Tuk-Tuk drivers, fellow travellers, kids at Indonesian orphanages, kids selling bracelets at Angkor Wat, guest house owners, folk at restaurants, Cambodian mission teams or simply random strangers, its the people I’ve met who have made my South-East Asia experience amazing. There’s something about human relationships. We really do need each other!

So guys, if you’re reading this, thanks for making the trip amazing. :)

[I'll put up a post with a slideshow of pictures from Angkor Wat shortly. Seriously, it is amazing.]

Yesterday morning and all of Saturday I was in the Cambodian town of Poipet, right on the border with Thailand. The guide books call this place the ‘Armpit of Cambodia’, but it was there, in a small church service overlooking the dusty street, that I was hit by some of the most beautiful images of unity, grace, faithfulness-without-borders and family that I’ve ever seen.

And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.

Revelation 5:9

The first thing that struck me was language. The service was conducted in Khmer and relayed to us by a translator, but the songs where a combination of both. I tell you now, there is nothing quite like two ‘tongues’, two peoples, two nations, coming together with one voice to praise the God of heaven and earth. Singing ‘shout to the Lord, all the earth, let us sing; power and majesty, praise to the King,’ whilst witnessing and listening to ‘the earth’ come together was phenomenal. It’s amazing to travel to countries like South Africa and Singapore and praise God with the Christians there, but it’s when you don’t even share the same language that the size and variety and extent of the Kingdom of God truly hit you. God is good. In a country half-destroyed the most horrific atrocities ever committed by humanity, he has saved a remnant to himself, little torches, blazing in the thick darkness, spreading like a wildfire of love into the lives of orphans, prostitutes, AIDS victims and hopeless British tourists who happen to stumble into the mix!

The second thing actually nearly brought me to tears. Some of the little kids, the cutest things you’ve ever seen, came into the room to sing and dance for the rest of the congregation. They were singing ‘Give thanks with a grateful heart’ (in Khmer), and when they came to the line that says ‘And now, let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich, because of what the Lord has done for us’… The kids were dressed (some of them) in clothes which looked like they hadn’t been washed for weeks, and in the world’s eyes were the poorest and weakest of them all. And yet, as they sang those incredible words, they were so full of life and happiness. I mean, Cambodian kids can bust some dance moves, I tell you! God is good. He is in the business of taking the weak and helpless things of the world and using them to shame the wise (and the rich tourist who claims to love his family). He is in the business of lifting the poor and broken in the gentle arms of his grace, and setting them on a solid foundation called love. He opens his arms and says ‘let the little children come to me’, and then dies and rises again to bring them into the beautiful dance of Trinitarian Love. If I want to call myself a follower of Jesus, I must be ready to pour out that same love.

The last thing was the clearest picture of the Christian family that I’ve seen yet. Minucius, a second century lawyer who later converted said this about the early Christians: They love one another before being acquainted. They practice a cult of lust, calling one another brother and sister indiscriminately. And sometimes, in a far flung corner of the world, when you need to get transport to Bangkok for a plane flight but don’t really know how, that very same love can still be seen nearly 2000 years later. I asked a man called Sam, who is very involved with the running of CHO (Cambodian Hope Organisation – the charity in Poipet associated with Tearfund), if he had any recommendations for transport, and he went far beyond simple advice. He, his wife and his daughter went with me all the way through the border, helping me out with immigration forms, pointing me to the right queues, and ultimately negotiating a deal with the locals which meant I could get all the way to the airport for about £10. He spent a good hour and a half with me, making sure I didn’t get ripped off (and without him I would have been robbed – barely anyone speaks English in Poipet!), ensuring that the drivers knew exactly where I wanted to go, and generally being an absolute legend. I thanked him afterwards as we were waiting for the minibus to fill, and he looked at me and was like, ‘We’re family.’ So matter-of-fact. He didn’t know me (I wasn’t even on the Tearfund team!) but he counted me as his brother, and actually, truly as his brother, not just using it as a cheesy Christian title! His love, and the motivation behind his love, blew me away. There is a man who looks like Jesus. There is a glimpse of what the church should really look like. May we have the same love back home in our ‘developed’ society.

All in all, the weekend in Poipet was amazing. I’m so grateful to Katie and the rest of the team for putting up with me and making me feel welcome. I met some incredible people and saw the (sometimes quite gritty) real side of life in Cambodia. I shared Lychees and Iced Coffee with folk who have taken Jesus at his word, and are building libraries and teaching bible stories to the ‘least of these’ as if they were doing to him. So be praying for them.

(What a weekend!)

[In reverse chronological order I'll put the rest of my Indochina experiences up over the next few days... less than half a week till I go home...!]

However, slightly more nerve-wrecking is the second leg, where I dive into Cambodia by bus, on my own, for a couple of days. Granted I’ve prepared everything to the smallest detail, and granted I’m going to get to see Angkor Wat, but I’m still pretty nervous! If by some fluke/miracle I make it to Friday evening in one piece, I’m then going to meet up with Katie Brown for a day, leaving on Saturday morning to head to Bangkok (which is where I catch a plane back).

Should be good, but there’s a lot of room for error! Please be praying I keep what few wits I have about me…!

We were staying at a small orphanage called ‘Filadelphia’ on the Indonesian Island of Batam, where, next Sunday, a new kindergarten is opening (hence the decorative spree). I loved every bit of the trip – the ferry crossing to the island, meeting the kids, staying up till half one painting, getting my hands completely covered, being genuinely out-skilled by a ten-year-old at football (anyone who knows me won’t find that hard to believe…) and even been stopped for a ‘random’ security check at customs, drugs search and all (now far be it from me to suggest they choose their targets, but I was the only obviously western person in a crowd of about a hundred. Just saying…). One of the most striking things, however, was the staggering gap between Singapore and Batam.

As soon as you get off the beaten track (‘beaten’ here means having at least some semblance of a usable road), it’s like you’ve plunged into a completely different world. Singapore and Batam are separated by only 11 miles of water, but they may as well be on different planets. Singapore is clean, efficient, safe and New-York-esque, its skyline dominated by skyscrapers and its infrastructure built on cutting-edge technology. Batam, quite simply, looks like a developing country. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not showing a preference for either culture (one is heavily materialistic and one has 60% of folk living on less than $2 a day [source - yes, it's Wikipedia.] ), it’s just that going from polished chrome to concrete and corrugated iron in a 40 minute boat ride (well, actually a -20 minute boat ride, because Indonesia is in a different time zone…) is extremely odd.

Once again, though, my subconscious western values that equate money with happiness were blown out of the water. The kids at Filadephia are loving life. I was told the story of one little girl (centre of the main photo) who they found on a rubbish dump, not even being able to speak, who is now bubbling over with happiness, clamouring to get into photos and showing me all her little toys (couldn’t speak a word of English, mind, but thankfully with kids that doesn’t matter so much. Sign language conveys ‘I want to play’ pretty well!). Community, friendship and love are worth so much more than anything we have gathering dust in our houses, but sadly I’m far too prone to jump to ‘stuff’ as the solution to my problems. Mother Teresa once said that it’s among the wealthy that you find the most terrible poverty of all – loneliness. And unsurprisingly, she knows what she’s talking about. There seems to be very little true community left in the UK (even in the churches).

Helping out the kids was great, and I really hope the next time I visit somewhere vaguely east I’ll be able to stay for longer. Just like with Lebone, the kids at Filadelphia are loved, by the folk who run it and by Jesus. Best of all, the children know it. Though I hadn’t a clue what they were saying, hearing them all do their call and response grace at mealtimes was brilliant (one kid says a sentence, and then the rest say it as well. I think it’s spontaneous too, which is cool.), and once the girl I mentioned before even brought a Bible to show me (clearly couldn’t understand a word of it, but you know, the Bible is a central part of their life which is good!). Jesus said ‘Let the little children come to me’, and the folk at Filadelphia definitely are.

Be praying for Filadelphia, the kids and the leaders, and for the new Kindergarten. It’s a very good work they’re doing, but it’s impossible without God’s help. Thankfully, though, he loves kids, so I think they’ll be just fine.

[Alex Cherney via Gizmodo.]

The food in Singapore is by far the most interesting and inventive of any country I’ve been to so far. I had a whole crab placed in front of me on Monday, which was a new experience, and tonight I’m going out for a Singaporean delicacy: Fish-head Curry. That’s curry, with a large fish’s decapitated head on top. Should be good! This goes alongside fried octopus, eel, pregnant fish (had that a few times, it’s pretty good) and the explosive wasabi. The variety is staggering!

However, there’s also an awful lot of amazing drinks as well. (Sweetened) Ice tea is incredible, particularly lemon and passion-fruit, and I had a sugar-cane drink yesterday which was beyond description. Why don’t we get these sort of drinks in the UK? Heaven and Earth ice teas are (unsurprisingly) owned by Coca-Cola anyway, and are far more refreshing than anything else they produce. Yes, I went there. These drinks are better than Dr. Pepper.

Anyway, as well as fish head curry, I have a bunch of other things lined up which should be exciting: Transformers 3 on Thursday with folk from church, heading to Batam, Indonesia on Friday and Saturday to help paint an orphanage/kindergarten, and then Vietnam on Monday for a week, capped off with a visit to Cambodia to see Katie Brown and (hopefully) Angkor Wat! These last couple of weeks are looking good!