A few months ago before we finally made this post and until we had our own machines to giveaway, we acquired a cheap Thinkpad from one of our partners at TeacherTech and got Houen an old Thinkpad laptop to build his dream online travel agency with which was an initial success! at https://www.anglocambodiatravel.com (may or may not be currently down) but it was apparent that he couldn't keep working on it if he was sleeping out of his tuktuk and had no place to work and charge the machine from so we covered that temporarily at least for now.
Below are some of the key moments in the journey.
Hoeun borrowing a cousin's card to buy his domain. He's already quite worried and confused at this point thinking the domain price is the one-time cost of the store forever!
and then... eventually success! his Shopify store is connected to the domain! However, the smile is not one of joy! It's laugher from the endless ribbing he got from his family and us for his "hunt and pecking" on the computer to do anything. There's a 20 year gap between an NGO teaching him how to use WIndows 98 and someone like us finally providing him a computer he can use and relearn/practice what he was originally exposed to.
At this point he's still extremely worried over the costs in a country where someone's daily earnings as little as $3/day, the standard Shopify rate of $20-25/mnth is extremely expensive. We'll be in touch Shopify to work out something!
The nice place above isn't what we got him though, Hoeun is no longer sleeping in a tuktuk but is also in a fairly basic place that importantly, will be affordable especailly as his business works its way to break even with our initial target being $100-200/mnth
