Children's Activity Leader in Cambodia

Looking back at my time away between January and March 2013....all I can say is that I'm so glad that I chose to go to Cambodia!   For those who don't know, I spent 8 weeks living in Battambang; while volunteering teaching English and leading activities at an NGO school called Children's Action For Development (CAD).I loved this project as it put me into a situation which I've never been in before. At first I found teaching a bit of a challenge but it soon became the norm; and I saw each day as a new opportunity to teach the children something new that they'll gain from in the future.

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On Friday 8th February, Hamish, a fellow volunteer, and I caught the 8:00 bus to Siem Reap. 5 hours later we had arrived, checked in to our hotel and were sat enjoying steak & chips for lunch.  Friday afternoon mainly featured souvenir buying and looking around. This is when I realised I had left my debit card 4 hours away at the volunteer house, with five dollars in my wallet the rest of the weekend wasn’t looking very promising.

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Battambang is where I am living in Cambodia. The first thing I noticed in Battambang is the incredible amount of motorbikes and mopeds there are. It is the primary/only transport for people going to work, students going to school and even fearless tourists. Every pavement is lined with “motos” day and night. I also noticed some local people try getting multiple people on a moped; I’ve seen 3 people plus a baby on a single bike!There are also many colonial buildings, with my favourite being the Provincial Governor’s Residence which is very much overstated compared to it’s surroundings.

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Hello and welcome to the first blog I have ever written!  It has been a week since I arrived in Cambodia and I’m having a great time. My first challenge was getting there! After a night in Bangkok, I got a taxi to the Mo Chit bus terminal to catch Bus 921 to Aranyaprathet town. The bus wasn’t too bad despite the random stops, which added a few hours to estimated journey time. Then I faced my first experience crossing a land border and all the queues! Luckily after hours queuing at the border a miracle happened, I was found by Kim one of the local coordinators (LC) who joined me and we were quickly off on the road to Siem Reap.

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My Friday started off like any other morning in Cambodia. Wake up at 7, have breakfast, hop on a moped, teach some English. I finish at 10h30 on Fridays, which is quite nice, but on this Friday I returned home and started packing. Don’t worry, my time in Cambodia hasn’t come to and end. I was off to Phnom Penh for the weekend. We took a ‘took took’ (excuse the spelling), which is a 4 seater carriage pulled behind a man on a motorbike, to the bus station in Battambang and got on board our bus.

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Another week of work went by really well, I’m slowly getting the hang of this whole “teaching” business. Language barrier is still a bit on a struggle, but I’ve already noticed an improvement in some of the children’s English. Every Friday I finish work at 10h30, so the rest of the day is for me to do what ever I please and start the weekend with plenty of energy. This weekend I decided I would go to Siem Reap – I flew into there from Bangkok, but never actually went into the city.S

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I’d like to start this blog posting with a bit of an apology. I haven’t done a posting in a few weeks, and word on the inter-web is that my fans having been requesting a new one. So the fans have spoken, and here it is. It’s been a pretty crazy few weeks, really exciting and really tiring. As it stands there are 19 volunteers in the house at the moment. 14 of the 19 are a university group called DUCK, which stands for Durham University Charities Kommittee (the bad spelling of “Committee” is because it doesn’t make a cool acronym without the “K”).

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Food was always going to be an interesting part of my trip to Cambodia, and today proved that. Before I left, I watched a youtube video of when Gordon Ramsey visited this amazing country. (Link below) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC_3MY1CgtI One of the foods he eats is a duck egg which has been left to develop for 20 days and then boiled before eating. I thought it was a good challenge to accept. Today I lived up to this challenge.&

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