Day 1...very inventive

 The roads are interesting to say the least-traffic is constant in the streets, not sure why there are rocks on the main road.

 I wish I knew why people cannot put their rubbish in the bin!

 This is a quiet street

 Sisowath Quay, this is the main road outside our hotel with the Mighty Mekong river opposite our hotel - brown!!! This side walk is alive with people by 5.30 each morning and again at 5.30pm. Community exercise is the way to go.

 A traffic jam in the main street of PP

First Icecream stop................................................>

Our tour kicked off at 1:15am on Friday 8^th July (today).  12 highly excited students along with Lynne, David and 3 other volunteers, bid their parents goodbye at Perth International Airport and set out on a journey that would last just over 16 days. After a 5 hour long plane trip, a short stop over at Kuala Lumpur and then another 2 hour flight we finally reached our destination of Phnom Penh. The humidity hit us all by shock, sweaty, tired and exhausted the boys packed into a bus with all of the luggage and donations, whilst the girls filed into two separate Tuk Tuks. After a 20minute drive we arrived at Mekong Palace, the hotel that we will be staying at for the next two nights. After freshening up a bit with some showers and naps we headed down the rode and ate lunch in a lovely restaurant/café. After a decent feed we headed off to what is called the “indoor markets”, really it is just a shopping centre with makeshift walls that separate store from store. After some successful retail therapy, we headed back home, still trying to recover from the lack of sleep of the previous night; we all had an afternoon rest. Dinner tonight was at a place called “friends”. Run by a charity called “Choice”, it employs homeless and disadvantaged people and trains them as chefs and waiters. This was a fantastic experience and was topped of by two of the volunteers from “choice” talking to us over dinner about what their roll is in the Cambodian community.  Today was a huge culture shock for all of us, seeing all of the homeless families with no money and no food makes us think twice about our place in the world.  I am sure tomorrow will be as full of surprises as today was, hopefully we won’t be as tired and will be able to appreciate a lot more of it. The following video was taken from inside a tuk tuk travelling through the streets:

Kirsten Chick