When Elephants fight only the ants are killed.

This quote (the title) really captures the experience my girlfriend and I had whilst living and working in Cambodia from April to mid-August 2008. A country that is still rebuilding itself after years of Civil War and the atrocities suffered under the Khmer Rouge. It is a universal quote for the sufferings of people all over the world whose lives are controlled by people too high up to even notice their existence. I am 26 years old and only just becoming aware of the world around me.
Have you ever seen a child tired? Not tantrum tired because they have been playing with toys and friends all day. But really tired. Bloodshot eyes, circled with dark rings, hair knotted and unkempt, dirty rags hanging from frail bones. A child exhausted from working all day, selling books, begging, rummaging through bins for plastic bottles to collect and sell. We see emotive images like these on T.V. everyday, yet it's so much harder to ignore when poverty physically reaches out and touches you. Suddenly everything changes inside you.
I kept a journal of our experiences in Cambodia and want to recapture our journey with the words written at that time. We are two everyday people who took two months out to travel Thailand. 7 months later and back in the UK we saw Laos and managed a school for street children in a country I previously assumed was somewhere in Africa. Here is our story told through unedited extracts from my journal.