Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences                                          
A Student's Perspective of the 'Learning Journey' to Cambodia

The 'learning journey' was totally unlike the usual experiences of academic life-assignments, readings, essays and presentations. The shor t field trip to Cambodia provided students with an integrated learning experience where participating students had to sacrifice a recess week that would normally be spent preparing for mid-term tests and writing essays to be involved as a member of a student camera crew and/or field researchers aiming to create a documentary of fellow students' activities and experiences.

Students bid farewell to the villagers of Anlong Raing

The filming crew (Chinthaka, Yikang and Shamraz) had to come up with a storyboard, prepare key interview questions and be familiar with the technical aspects of filming with useful tips from a travelling professional assistant, Liam. Students had a chance to observe the process of a 'learning journey' not just as participants, but also as someone trying to produce something intellectually useful and creative from the trip. Participants also benefited from the vibrant field sites they visited as well as learning collaboratively from other student participants, from Dr. Carl, from members of FACT and from a whole host of ordinary Cambodians they met along the way.

Students gained insight into life in Cambodia, particularly the 'floating lives' of the Tonlé Sap. Homestays enabled students to fully appreciate the everyday hardships, simplicities and the significance of fish and nature to these people. Where but in the fields can one see how a village goes to sleep with the setting sun and awaken with the break of dawn? Here on the lake, everybody seems to be up and about paddling on water-children going to their small 'floating' primary school, women selling vegetables and other consumables, the menfolk mending nets or traps or going into the lake to fish. Though all students had read about the Tonlé Sap prior to the trip, their senses came alive during their stay in one of the 'floating villages'. For a brief time, students experienced a completely different environment and a way of life that was removed from their materialistic, urbanised existence. This first-hand experience made students reexamine the academic articles on the Tonlé Sap from a fresh perspective, develop a sense of empathy for the folks living there, and reinvigorated scholarly interest in a myriad of environmental issues.