A Student’s Day – Marum Restaurant, Siem Reap

Let’s take a peek at the typical day of one of our hospitality training students in the Kaliyan Mith program in Siem Reap. N is 20 years old and is originally from Siem Reap. He now lives with his older sister and another Marum student. He’s been studying at Marum for 11 months, 7 of those on service training and 4 months cooking. He prefers cooking to service and his favorite dish to prepare is the barbequed pork ribs with apple and radish salad.

A typical day shift starts at 3pm. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday he goes straight to English class at 3pm, on Tuesday he goes straight to life skills class. He really enjoys his English classes. He had never studied English before, so when he first started on service he was very nervous about speaking to the customers in a brand new language! However after one month of studying hard and good support from the trainers, he felt more confident about communicating in English.

At the moment he is studying the topic of drugs in life skills classes. He has learned many interesting things about the harmful effects of drugs, especially on health. It’s very useful information which he can share with his friends. This topic will last for 2 months.

The other main topic studied at Marum is work/professional skills. After his English/life skills class, it is straight to the kitchen for preparation for the busy dinner period. It is always busy, especially once customers turn up for happy hour which is every day from 5-7pm, then its cook, cook, cook until his break! The students cook their own dinner and take turns eating together, making sure the kitchen is always sufficiently staffed. Then it’s cook, cook, cook again until last orders at 9:30pm! (luckily, N says the busy cooking periods are his favorite part of the day!)

After an exhausting work week, N mostly just relaxes and catches up on chores on his days off! He cooks (he can’t get enough of it!), reads books and sleeps!

For the Cambodian P’Chum Ben festival the staff and students get a well-earned break running from Sept 15 until Oct 1st (reopening Oct 2nd) and there will be great new specials coming up in October that the students have been practicing already!