Right so here goes my first ever blog type thingy:

We all set off early (4am) on Monday morning, we being: myself, Ian, Anson, Jarred and Joely (Anson’s 16 year old daughter). The gang arrived In Phnom Phen after, what has to be said a very enjoyable…yes that’s right enjoyable…smooth, non-traumatic flight. The first thing that hit me was the blinking hotness. Yes Singapore is hot but this was different man! Then the second thing that hit me (almost literally) was the traffic and lack of road markings! “No road markings here Rach” Ian tells me with a big stupid grin on his face…Jeez wept man, I was in bits but was doing my best Oscar winning performance of being dead calm so as not to freak out the other gang members.

No time to drop our bags off at the hotel, straight to CSC (Children’s Surgical Centre not the other CSC which I am, it has to be said, really rather experienced in). I was anticipating lots of open space and a rather large hospital but no…Busy, busy, boy was it busy. I thought all these people are never going to be seen in one day but Ian assured me they would be – impressive!

We were greeted by Dr Jim, me all mucker from Boro – so of course we hit it off straight away. Let me describe Dr Jim in one word… Santa, yep that pretty much sums his look up. Brilliant white hair and a lovely little white beard to boot..I always knew Santa was from M’boro. Dr Jim told us a little about the hospital and explained what we’d be doing that morning…operating room – okay then. I have at this point just recovered from the argghhness of a) a flight and b) lack of road markings, hey OR nee bother.

We were told to put on our surgical scrubs. Mine were obviously made for my father as I could have fitted into them 17 times. So I get changed, envisaging a Greys Anatomy Merideth moment of loveliness but alas don’t think I’ll be getting the call from Hollywood anytime soon.

We walk into the OR, actually Ian gave me a little shove, and I cannot believe that there are 3 operations are going on at once in the same room…Surgeons all smiling and happy, everyone was so relaxed (except me, Anson, Jarred and Joely). We read the white board with the list of surgeries that day…broken bones, cleft lip, eye surgery and some other thing that I can’t spell but it’s when your brain starts to fall through your nose ( I am not joking).

I knew where I was heading when I spotted the tiny baby on the bed. 9 month old baby boy with a cleft lip and palate…I was mesmerised, I stood and stood and watched in awe as the 2 surgeons marked, sliced and sewed this little boy’s lip to perfection. Masters at their work, it was truly wonderful to see and they didn’t seem to mind me sticking my head right in and asking questions. I could not wait to see the boy the next day when he was awake.

We had a walk around the ward and post recovery room, everyone being well cared for and looked after..everyone living and surviving what ever it was that brought them to CSC.

After lunch at Dr Jim’s house (which was fried rice, phew that’s okay..well it was til I say the prawn) we went to CASC: Cambodia’s Acid Survivor Centre. This is where Acid victims are treated and looked after til they are well enough to go home.

I had a long time to think about what I was going to see at CASC as the 10 minute car ride (reassuring told by Ian) with no road markings was infact 40 friggin minutes! I was really excited to go to CASC and I knew I’d get a chance to chat to the kids (note to self: bring books for the kids next time). We had a look around the outside of CASC first. We saw the newly build homes for the survivors, awesome wooden houses on stilts. We saw the vegetable garden, where the survivors are taught how to farm to give them this skill for when they go back out to work. It was explained to us that the survivors struggle to go back to their original jobs because of the scarring that is left after the acid attack.

We met the acid survivors inside the house, each with their own heart-wrenching story. Brave, brave, brave…The ladies at CASC proudly showed us their wares…they make purses, handbags, table mats etc; another skill for them and a way of making money. I got a chance to have a cuddle and a chat with some of the wee bairns. My new BFF is a little girl with the biggest smile in the world, we had a good old chat…my hair was a huge fascination for her.

A fabulous BBQ at Dr Jim’s house on the evening, house filled with an array of vibrant and interesting people…

My 2 best experiences thus far: cleft lip baby and my BFF – wonderful. My 2 least favourite experiences thus far: no road markings and Ian’s ‘quite handy with the truth time allowance.

Day 2: On our way by 7.45am and straight into a ward round. We walked round the ward and Dr Jim explained about every single patient, what their condition was and what was their treatment plan for the future. Sitting on the bed with his mother was my baby boy, the 9 month old who had the cleft lip operation. Straight over I go and am greeted with the biggest smile ever…awhhh, I could have put him in a little sandwich ate him up.

Back into the OR. We watched 2 bone operations lasting a total of 2 hours. First a guy having screws taken out of his leg. Slice leg open, locate screws, pull out, stitch up – jobs a good un. Operation #2 is a snapped femur. So I’m thinking (coz I’ve seen it on the tele and I’m handling the OR room like a natural) it’s going to be all gentle and lovely but good god then they brought out the hammer…Bob the Builder goes OR, the pulling and the hammering and the screwing, oh boy. An hour later, rod inserted, femur fixed, wound stitched…am still thinking about the hammer!

After lunch we go off to S21…and that’s where I need to stop because I just can’t quite go there! Anyone who has been will know what I mean.

2 best experiences of day 2: best boy’s lovely smile and a a fixed femur. 2 least favorite experiences of today: hammering and hammering.

So that’s pretty much the end of my visit to Cambodia but I hope it won’t be my last. CSC and CASC I thank you, thank you for taking me in, talking me through it and being gentle with me. I doubt my world will ever be the same!

Happy New Year everyone!

What a fantastic year 2009 was, with over 4000 people attending Vanda’s five sell out events in Singapore and Hong Kong and a fantastic $173,000 USD raised for Children’s Surgical Centre in Cambodia. This amount ensured over 1200 children in Cambodia received operations that they wouldn’t have received otherwise.  We were also honored to receive the WWCBA Promoter of the year award.

2009 was also the year when we held the first WWCBA Asia Cup between Singapore and Hong Kong which was held on the Padang in Singapore. The event was Vanda’s first arena event and whilst a departure from our normal black tie gala dinners, it was a great event to produce. The night saw eight bouts strongly contended by the men and women representing their county of residence. The partisan crowd from Singapore didn’t get it their own way all night though. A great vocal support for Hong Kong was in attendance and they made their presence felt throughout the night. After the first two bouts went to Singapore, Hong Kong were back with two wins including the brilliantly fought female bout. Bout 5 went to Singapore before Bout 6 saw the eagerly awaited match-up of Singapore’s undefeated John Cappetta take on the number one heavyweight in the region Adam Upton. From the first bell the bout was dominated by Upton who continued this until the third round when a Cappetta combination put Upton down on the canvas. He recovered, but the judges had obviously been watching a different fight awarding the fight to Cappetta. Nobody was more surprised than John! That left it at 4-2 as we went into the 7th bout that saw Singapore’s skipper Jan Souleyman stop his opponent and secure the cup for Singapore. The final bout saw Hong Kong’s skipper win comfortably which for the record brought the score to 5-3. How different it would all have been if the heavyweight decision had gone the other way!

As I write this today, there are 52 boxers getting ready in Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney for the upcoming events. March 13th will see us put on our first event in Australia in front of 600 people at Luna Park, Sydney. We then head to Hong Kong for the now traditional kick-off to the HK Sevens weekend where we hold the always sold out event at the Intercontinental Hotel. From Hong Kong we are back to Singapore for the 1100 people event at Suntec in Singapore on April 10th.

It is going to be a busy first four months to the year but the Vanda Promotions team are looking forward to raising the bar once again and continuing to give audiences and boxers a night to remember.

On the charity side, Vanda has set a target of $250,000USD for 2010. Childrens Surgical Centre remains our principal beneficiary from the Singapore and Hong Kong events as we continue to be blown away with the incredible work performed by Dr Jim and the team. Vanda’s founder will be making a trip out to the hospital in Phnom Penh with some of the boxers in February. In Sydney we will also be raising funds for Stepping Stone House which supports children who have been made homeless through no fault of their own.

One addition to the charitable activities in 2010 will be the introduction of our KIVA fund . At each event we will be looking to raise $10,000USD for the fund that will allow us to meet some of our longer term charitable aims. Kiva is a great platform that allows us to “lend” to people in impoverished circumstances to start ventures that will give them long term opportunities. An Example could be be Rosemarie Beluso who is looking for a loan of $325 to purchase raw materials so she can manufacture pots and use the extra revenue for her family. Another would be Marieta Gupuz who is looking to borrow $110USD for farming supplies. These loans are given free of interest and the default level is something most banks could only dream about! Vanda Promotions would like to raise funds at each of its planned nine events this year. We will then set about making the loans to help people via the Kiva platform. The beauty of this is that the money eventually comes back, thus allowing us to continue lending and growing the fund each year and in turn helping hundreds of people.

As always, we continue to be able to do what we do because of your great support so to everyone once again, have a great 2010 and thanks for everything.

The familiar drive through the chaos that is Phnom Phen was now becoming pedestrian knowing what would be waiting at the other end. We knew this was the last day and we knew what cases were due for theatre as we had been part of the consulting process the day before as well as the morning rounds.

Geraldine Cox from Sunrise Children’s Villages had a 9 year old girl who had Brittle Bone Disease which had left her legs very bent from fractures. Jim wanted to do a an operation called Fragmentation, realignment and intramedullary fixation for tibial deformity. He explained this to us lot as the kebab procedure whereby he would extract the tibia, saw it into many pieces and then put a rod through it before re-inserting into the leg to make it straight. We all wanted to see this but Jim offered for one of us to scrub-in so we could assist. Chris Snell took up the challenge and for the next 2.5 hours worked with the team as they opened up the leg and performed the operation. As this was happening the other three tables went into action and Carl Griffith found himself scrubbing-in also. In all the guys worked 5 operations that morning.

During a break, Chris and I were out in the front when a car came in fast. The doors opened and we were beckoned over to find a man with a 10cm spike sticking out of his eye. Three days at CSC prepares you for most things and we guided the guy over to the waiting area. We found out later that his son had been hunting frogs and the spear had hit concrete and shot up into the fathers eye. Miraculously it had missed the actual eye and embedded itself into the bone at the side.

That afternoon we went to the house for the Cambodian Acid Survivors Assoc (CASC) where the residents are getting back on their feet and receiving treatment after acid attacks. This incredible brutal attack can kill but even the less severe attacks normally result in incredible pain and suffering and we had witnessed this ourselves in the OR when an attack victim was having skin grafts. The facility is part of CSC and allows survivors to interact with others, gain job training and therapy. Whilst there we saw the tailors that now work there and it dawned on me that we purchase 100 boxer uniforms a year for our events so we agreed that we could transfer this business to CASC!

Children’s Surgical Centre continues to go from strength to strength taking on more complicated procedures and operations every year. They work tirelessly but with incredible fiscal prudence that gives great confidence that every dollar we donate from Vanda is make a very real difference. Our target this year is $200,000USD donated to them and we are at $77,000USD year to date. I have every confidence we will hit this number and by doing so allow Dr Jim and his fantastic team the opportunity to concentrate on making the lives of the children better.

Day 3 started with our arrival at CSC just after 8am. There was already a mix of about 80 people outside waiting to be either seen by the doctors or getting ready for surgery.

The morning started with a trip around the wards. Dr Jim and his doctors assess each patient and continue to plan their treatment. Jim has a very direct, no nonsense style that is probably not seen to often in Asia but it is highly effective. He solicits opionion and is happy to engage in discussion but if he is certain on a certain course of action then it is prescribed without challenge. We met with all types of patients including adults and children. These included a snake bite victim, multiple limb breaks, cleft palate/lip babies, deformities and acid attack victims. In all I believe we went thorough 23 cases in an hour.

The rest of the morning was taken up with surgery in theatre and the guys were all scrubbed in to assist. I will leave it to them to explain the emotions and how they felt about the experience but it was obvious from their faces that whilst they were experiencing some major challenges they were finding it very rewarding. Whether it be cleft surgery on a baby, working with the lady with the snake bite or removing the rods from the leg of a young girl who had a major fracture, they all mucked in and got on with it.

A 4am start was required to get to the airport for the first flight out to Phnom Penh on Sunday. I called Andy from the taxi, as he has a track record of not being up on time, but found that he had decided not to go to bed this time.  It became quicky apparent  upon seeing him that he had been partying instead. Chris Snell and Carl Griffith turned up ready to go and were closely followed by George who has very kindly given up his time to do the video camera work. If you know how senior George is in the business (his last gig was producing the Liverpool v Singapore match), you will understand this could seem like overkill but we are very grateful to have him along.

We flew without event into Siam Reap before an onward flight to Phnom Penh. When we disembarked, there seemed to be some confusion on what to do with us but eventually a lady took us down the stairs, on to the tarmac and showed us through a back door out into the car park at the airport. This could have been viewed as very efficient and indeed Andy was celebrating the fact he had not had to part with $20USD for a visa. It then dawned on us, we were now illegal immigrants in Cambodia and we didn’t even have our luggage. We re-traced our route and 20 mins later we found ourselves back where we started and facing some embarrassed airport officials who now realised that their airport security had been pretty badly compromised.

The wonderful Emma, our liason at CSC, met us at the airport and we headed to the hotel to drop bags. The hospital does not do do surgery on Sunday so Emma, Andy, George and Carl headed off to see some of city whilst Chris and I headed to the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) to do some writing (how else did you think the blogs got written and the websites updated)

7.45am today and we headed over to Dr Jim’s Chenda clinic, a facility of CSC, to get our scrubs which is the clothing you wear for operating theatre. Chris, who is our resident comedian, having done stand-up, spent the next  20 mins doing Grey’s Anatomy jokes. We were then driven to the CSC hospital where upon arrival we could see a hundred or so people already waiting to be seen on the first set of consultations of the week. The guys were paired off with some medical students from the UK who were in town and who had started the consultations and I headed off to spend my morning with Dr Jim.

It is hard to describe the energy of a CSC, it is invigorating. Everyone has purpose and regardless of how may people are waiting outside to be seen, you know their day will end better than it started because of the CSC team. Dr Jim and I started in the operating room as he checked on the operations for the day. Monday’s are normally quieter in the OR as the consultations normally see people get scheduled for the Tuesday as they have probably eaten that morning. However, there was already a young lady in being prepped for a toe amputation as she had six toes on each foot and on the other table was a young boy having a hernia operation.

Dr Jim asked me to go get a medical student and whichever one of my lads that was shadowing so they could  would scrub up and he would do the amputation. Vanda’s very own Andy was the lucky man and he experienced his very first operation which included assisting Dr Jim in the proceedure. Meanwhile, on the other table, a baby who was 6 months old was having a cleft palate operated on and Carl Griffiths was assisting the surgeon and clearly enjoying the experience.

During a typical Khymer lunch we were discussing the cleft palate surgery on babies and Chris was telling us that he and his wife had forgone a wedding list to have people donate to have cleft surgery done via The Smile Train. It was therefore a very happy Chris that spent the next two hours in theatre assisting on a cleft surgery for a 5 month old little boy. This video is Chris at the table about 1 hr in.

I spent my afternoon with Dr Jim and we saw a huge variety of cases. One patient’s results came back as cancer so we went to his bedside to tell him that time was against him and he should head home. Another was a hemophiliac that needed risked bleeding to death every time his wound dressing was changed having been amputated on one leg to the knee. He need to get specialist care and that was discussed. We then moved on to a fresh burns victim, this time a male who had had one skin graft following a having acid thrown all over his body and the one ear. Words can’t describe the horror of an acid attack and the pain they go through healing. Each time a dressing is changed it is agony and I witnessed human bravery at its best.

Finally we went to see the eye surgeons as they finished off. They had completed 17 operations that day and the same would happen again tomorrow. Every person seen today, every operation, every procedure and follow up is done by CSC at no charge. They receive no funding apart from donations and that is why we continue to support them. Today, like in previous trips, we have converted another four guys, having witnessed the wonders the team does. Tomorrow we will be in theatre at 8am to witness 9 operations scheduled and witness another incredible day at Children’s Surgical Centre in Cambodia.