While visiting Baphuon, we had a unique opportunity to meet Khen Khoul, a Buddhist monk. Khen recently started learning English and was excited at the chance to practice, by starting a conversation with Dom. He was curious to learn about where we were from, what our home is like, and what we do for a living.
Equally curious, we also took this opportunity to ask him about his family, what it's like to be a monk, etc. To our surprise, we learned that he chose to become a monk at a very early age because it was a good means for him to become well educated, and his family didn't have enough money to send him to school. He expressed that there were so many things about his life and being a monk that he wanted to tell us all about, but since he had just started learning English, he couldn't find the words to tell us everything he wanted to say.
He carried a fluent conversation with us and we were shocked to find out he had only started learning English in the last 3 months! He told us that monks spend a lot of time studying every single day... they only get a few days off per year, and Khen decided to use his 4 days of vacation to visit the Angkor Wat area with a few of his monk friends.
