Baking in Cambodia – Adventures in Volunteer Work

This week I’m introducing my fellow travel blogger, Jay Artale. I asked her to give you a sense of what it was like when she and her husband did volunteer work for 10 weeks in Cambodia. Come along for the ride!

When we moved from Los Angeles to Turkey, we hadn’t anticipated how cold the winters were, so each year we indulged our love of travel by chasing warmer weather from January to March.

I travel with an intention, which is easy to do when you’re a travel blogger with hungry blogs to feed and travel books to write and publish. I could easily travel non-stop. Anywhere—as long as there’s an internet connection. But my husband needs activities to keep him occupied, so when we were searching for a sunny destination to spend our 2017 winter, I was excited to discover Workaway.

What is Workaway?

This online membership site connects volunteers with host families looking for enthusiastic and skilled workers to help them in their home or at their place of business. You’re expected to do volunteer work 4-5 hours per day in return for food and accommodation.

They pitch Workaway as a cultural exchange program, and there are teaching, environmental, and community programs looking for volunteers.

Most hosts are searching for help with a small business like a hostel, bed-and-breakfast, organic farm, a retreat, or off-the-grid living. They’re sometimes looking for specific skills like plumbing or carpentry, but most are looking for practical volunteer work from people who are willing to try their hand at general tasks to maintain a house, business or property.

Each Workaway assignment is different. They might offer you private accommodation or a shared dorm room, which could include three meals a day or no food at all. So, it’s important to read the host’s profile to check what you’re letting yourself in for.

For an annual membership, volunteers get access to host profiles and can apply for placements across the globe. The Workaway website has targeted search functionality, allowing you to drill down to the continent, country, and city level. You can also enter search terms based on your skills to narrow the results down even further.

Workaway in Cambodia

When we told people we were doing volunteer work in Cambodia, they imagined us digging water wells, building schools, or teaching English to school children. But for ten weeks I improved my baking skills and my husband mastered the art of making furniture out of pallets. Not what you’d expect from a volunteer opportunity in Cambodia.

Our assignment was on the southern coast, in a little neighborhood called Otres Beach. We worked for a European couple whose business provided vegan and oat bars to the local hostels and Bed and Breakfasts catering to backpackers and travelers.

They also ran a food stall at Otres Market selling glazed donuts. This market was a popular weekly gathering that attracted visitors from neighboring towns and cities. It was a mix of live music events, craft, clothing, and jewelry stalls, and a mouth-watering collection of international food stalls run by the expats who had made Otres Beach their home.

Our Workaway Activities

Our first assignment was to prepare the market stall for the season. We had a week to get the stall ready, and we worked four hours a day in 90-degree heat and 70% humidity to rebuild the stall and create some signage. My husband used to work as a scenic painter on Hollywood sets, so this assignment was right up his alley.

At the first market of the season, we sold glazed donuts, but as the weeks progressed we expanded their product line to include savory items. One of my go-to recipes is a quiche, so I made vegetarian quiches from scratch.

If you’ve ever made pastry, you’ll know the importance of keeping the pastry cool. No chance in Cambodia. So, each week I had a pastry battle on my hands as I experimented with different techniques and ingredients to ensure a successful market offering.

I also learned how to make vegetarian Jamaican patties, but the new skill I was most proud of, was my first batch of New York Style bagels. The last thing I expected to learn during our Cambodia trip was how to make bagels that reminded me of one of my favorite U.S. cities, and although I haven’t baked a bagel since coming back to Turkey, I have the skill in my arsenal now.

While I was busy in the kitchen, my husband test-drove his new carpentry skills by making sun loungers, a dining table, and benches out of pallets. His furniture attracted local interest, and we (briefly) contemplated staying in Cambodia to start a pallet furniture business.

Our Workaway Experience

We lived at the end of a dusty lane shared with an extended family of Cambodians. Their children came to watch us work each day; the women had jobs in the kitchen baking cookies; Grandma did our laundry, and Grandpa was a brutal solution for getting rid of our rat problem.

We got to see the daily rhythm of life, and despite the hardships of their living conditions and the recent history of genocide, our neighbors always had smiles on their faces. It made us realize that no matter what challenges we were dealing with; they needed to be handled with the same grace and acceptance as the Cambodians showed.

Workaway Takeaway

Before arriving, we worried about being the oldest backpackers in town, but Otres Beach didn’t exhibit age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or religious bias. It was an inclusive community, based around a location and moment that put its arms around to welcome us in. For a brief period, we existed in a bubble created by a melting pot of nationalities.

We became regulars at the hardware store and grocery market and got to know the Cambodian shopkeepers by their first names. They laughed as we fumbled our way through their language, but were proud and supportive at our attempts.

We saw a steady stream of backpackers arrive to experience this corner of Cambodia, who fell in love with it as much as we did and decided to stay. Many of them set up a new business in the village, and we watched as the community rallied around to help them succeed. Each new business meant a boost to the local economy and work for the labor force.

We were lucky to have discovered this corner of the world before it changed, and the memories of this adventure and the people we met will linger with us for years to come. We can’t wait for our next volunteer work with Workaway adventure.

Tags: Cambodia, carpentry, featured, Otres Beach, volunteer travel, volunteer work, volunteering, volunteerism, Workaway

Category: Asia, Saving Money