Smile and welcome the sun

I cannot, for the life of me, remember where I first saw the link to this article (I assume FB), and if it was in FB that I saw, I also cannot remember who posted it. Anyhow, the first two paragraphs of the article caught my eye and prompted me to read on…

“Just 30 kilometers from Cambodia’s world famous Angkor temples is an astounding sight tourist don’t see.


Tucked away from foreign eyes on the outskirts of Siem Reap is a community of about 500 people who live-or survive-in a rubbish dump”

As I read on and examined the photos, my eyes welled up. I have never been to Angkor, and it is my dreams to go to Angkor one of these days, and while I have heard about the magnificence of Angkor, I have never heard of this story before in my life. And sadly, perhaps, out of sheer oblivion on my part, the thought of people living in such poverty in the vicinity of Angkor never really did cross my mind.

The article is a humbling read…especially so when the writer pointed out the fact of where the rubbish comes from – from tourists like you and I.

What made my heart smile was also the fact that the writer pointed out they find reasons to smile, and it made my heart swelled with tears on really how happy they are “because tomorrow they can see the sun again”. [The link is here]

At the end of the day, it really is the simple things that matters….and we, “normal people who has almost everything”, just don’t smile often enough because we get too caught up with ourselves. We moaned and we groan when the sun comes up the next day because we don’t get enough rest and then we go get busy trying to pay the bills we chalked up from chasing material stuff.

So when tomorrow comes, wake up and smell the roses, even if they are just in your head! And, (note to self) I hope you welcome the sun and find all the reasons you can to smile.