Humble Pie

Finished house this morning - hurrah. Well, strictly speaking there is still a mud bridge to make but the mud wasn't delivered so we declared the house done anyway as the monks are coming to bless it tomorrow.

Visited war museum this afternoon. It wasn't so much the displays of rusting Russian tanks, personnel carriers or landmines as the guide here.

There is nothing more humbling than a person whose opening line is 'I am very lucky - I have been shot three times, hit by shrapnel and stood on a landmine and I am still here.' His wife died 6 weeks ago from TB and once he heard we were building houses he took Martyn quietly to one side and said 'Thank you very much, you had nothing to do with this and you come to help us'

There are still more than 4000 landmines left here and they are all the ones made of plastic which they need sniffer dogs to find. Even now roughly 32 people a month are injured or killed by landmines.

Needless to say we needed ice cream to cheer ourselves up.

And we still managed the Pol Pot film after that (we missed it yesterday as dinner over ran). Apparently it is quite watered down (for which I am eternally grateful - it was bad enough as it was). Had to read between the lines a bit as it was a 'government approved' film but still, informative and just, well, very sad.

Needed something to cheer ourselves up after that as well. Will power prevailed and we didn't have another ice cream. Went for fish spa instead. Felt a bit sorry for the fish really but they seemed to enjoy it. Feet all sparkly and tingly now!

You see the thing is, with Hiroshima (and most of the other war memorials / cemeteries etc we've been to) its very peaceful, well balanced and informative with interspersings of horrific photos but somehow there is a sense of detachment. This is yet another beautiful country with the most stunning friendly innocent people who have seen things that just shouldn't be.

Ah well, hugs to all. Stay safe.

Hot butts

No we are not on a beach where Martyn is ogling females ...... Title of today's blog is to remind us to make sure we leave hired bikes in the shade! Had one quite major ouch as we sat back on our bikes - left them in the shade after that!!!!!

Left at 9 ish for a day cycling around the smaller temples as we work up to the big ones. It was destined to be an expensive day - two bikes for the whole day = 2 dollars!

Lovely lovely cycle ride past rice paddies, fishermen and tuk Tuks into temple land. Lots of apsara carvings (nymph like things) with stone lions and elephants and lots of window and doors with lovely views.

We cycled the grand circuit visiting Pre Rup, East Mebon, Preah Khan and Ta Prohm ( which is the one Tomb Raider was filmed at but we liked the others more!) favourite one was Prea Khan I think. After Prea Khan we scooted through the north gate of Angkor Thom and out the Victory Gate trying to cycle with our eyes closed so we would not see any of the big temple complexes we are planning to see later in the week!

Had a packing error this morning and completely forgot first aid kit (thankfully not needed) and food - ooops. Consequently had to buy food - three cans of drink, two bananas, one pineapple (small), two orange lollies, two litres of water and a tube of Pringles. What a balanced diet!

Banana purchase was funny - lovely yoda type man wanted one dollar for his bananas - after a while we worked out it was a dollar a bunch - well what were we going to do with twenty already wonderfully ripe bananas? We gave him a dollar for two and completely made his day judging by the cackling laughter as we were leaving!

Back at hostel by five thirty in time for Martyn to be traumatised - Wallie our Scottish building manager had two computer issues neither of which Martyn could fix. I think he needs therapy. I may not be able to remove him from the wifi until he has found the answer! To be fair one of them is to do with cambodian 3G card and we think is an issue with the phone provider! I think however that the challenge is on now and Martyn has the bit between his teeth as it were!!!!

After dinner tonight we are off to the night Market to see film on Pol Pot, no doubt this will result in more late night ice cream as we attempt to cheer ourselves up. Oh well, we must have cycled in the region of thirty km today in well over thirty degree heat so we deserve it - and we've a house to finish tomorrow!

My lovely hubby

Has fixed our shower by hitting the reset button with his toothbrush and 'borrowed' the air conditioner remote someone had left on reception desk - warm water and cool room ....... Ahh the luxury - trouble is he seems to think this will do as my anniversary present. To be honest, it probably will!!!!

Scary....

Have handed passports over to agency for Vietnam visa processing. Due back on Wednesday - hope this works! One hour of pointing at calendars and phone calls to lady who runs hostel to act as three way interpreter later and we've got our fingers crossed! Two of the girls volunteering with us used this agency and all worked out so hopefully will be ok!

Then went to handicraft workshop and the National Museum. Lots of temple history to prepare ourselves as we are off to see some smaller outlying temples tomorrow - apparently it's best to do the little ones first and work up to the big three!

Finished the day with a cello concert. Yes, a cello concert. A weekly event that is free and given by a Swiss doctor raising money for his 5 free childrens hospitals in Cambodia. Concert was interspersed with lots if depressing statistics about encephalitis, tuberculosis and dengue fever.

Had to go for ice cream after dinner to cheer ourselves up!

Day two building

And Kay gets a machete and is trusted with the only power drill - woop woop!
Rained hard this morning so had to delay leaving for an hour. Consequently worked double hard for the time we had left. Stripped bamboo and finished the two panels that make the Walls. Final construction on Monday when we stay until it's finished!

End of term at school today - new year holiday next week so we gate crashed their end of term party, played Cambodian games and taught the kids musical statues and the okey cokey!
Builders get paid today so apparently we all meet up for pizza and rice wine. Supposedly there are special herby pizzas available if desired. I think not! And we remember rice wine from Borneo - dangerous stuff and we don't want to ruin our obviously maturing wine taste buds so I think we might avoid that as well!
Oooops just seen time - gotta go!

Building or beaches?

Guess which we chose...

Yes well, not hard really was it!

Around a week ago we realised that in all the time we have been away we havent actually sat on a beach and vegged out once. We thought about it for a while and then came across this project. It's about 2km from Siem Reap and is in a village called Atvea. They have sorted out nursery, school and labour ward with midwives so far and are now into maintaining those and building houses. They work with the monk and village elders to identify the most needy people in the village who then get a house built for them. This is a really big thing as the people are living in little bamboo huts that are knee deep in water during the rainy season. They get a house like the one behind me in the picture.

We've arrived in time to help finish this one off so we spent the morning making bamboo shades and whittling bamboo for more shades. Hopefully we will have it all done by Tuesday and we will get to see the monks bless the house and the handing over ceremony!

Its for a widow with two little kids.

Siem reap is a lovely place - much more chilled out than Bangkok. Great dinner with the other volunteers last night - vegetable spring roll in a tapas bar - only in SE asia!

Anyway, we are going to hang around here until next weekend so we don't have the added hassle of finding somewhere to stay for Khmer new year (which is also when everyone celebrated their birthday as courtesy of the Khmer rouge many people do not know when they were born). Have been here one day and already have too many sad stories to tell about the history. There is no-one here aged between 35 and 60ish. There is massive illiteracy in the adult population......it's pretty bad and that's before you even start to think about the land mines. The teaching volunteers all have stories about orphans and trying to teach the words 'mother' and 'father'. The teacher at the nursery school is one of 12 kids born from what we an work out from their mother being raped by the khmer rouge soldier she was given to after they killed her husband. The teacher works 8-12 in the nursery and 6-midnight in a bar in the nightmarket and supports mother and her 11 siblings (and two orphans her mum has taken in) she would like to work longer for the nursery but tips at the bar are too good!

That's enough sad stories for now- this is a beautiful country with beautiful happy smiley people. We might get stuck here for a while!

You never know - we might even fit in the odd visit to a temple - apparently there is a big famous one here somewhere :)

We feel dirty

Starving hungry in airport last Thai baht would stretch to three spring rolls each or a junior whopper with cheese meal each. Guess which won.

We are convincing ourselves that strictly speaking having gone through passport control we are not actually in Thailand anymore but more in no-man's land so junk food is less of a sin.

Only now I've eaten it does anyone have any hints for taking the taste away??? Ooooh Martyn has just found chewing gum in bag - my saviour!!!