I have talked about them but here they all are - at least most of them - the family that have basically adopted me. It was my landlord’s birthday and Bunthorn and I were asked to the party. It was just great.

So here I am sitting on Marc in my favourite place in Chbar Morn. It is the lake south of the town and is as beautiful as ever. This weekend could well be the last I spend in Chbar Morn so this morning I decided to come back to the lake and to find out where the road went. Usually I stop at the ford and just walk along the road but today I bravely went down the very steep dangerous concrete slope, over the ford and up the other side and just carried on along by...

Highway 4: The best and worst of Cambodia: Several times in this blog I have talked about highway 4. It is the main road from PP to Sihanouk, in my opinion the worst city in Cambodia all casinos and sex!!, However it is also the route to the islands which are lovely. It is Cambodia's principle port and now has Cambodia's fastest growing economy. In addition to that between PP and Kampong Speu it is almost wall to wall garment factories - they carry on for a li...

This morning I spent 3 hours on the back of Marc on roads varying from good tarmac to bumpy dry mud. We were visiting pre-schools in 3 communes. Let me explain about pre-schools in Cambodia. There are 4 types of provision all of which are funded in a different way. 1. Public - usually attached to a primary school and should have a qualified teacher - funded through the POE 2. Private - paid for by parents 3 Community pre-school - teacher paid for by the commu...

Next week there is a 2 day holiday to celebrate the Water Festival. It is a very important date in Cambodia and they celebrate- often for far longer than 2 days. Kampong Speu had their festival this weekend and it was fun. All the streets were closed off and the whole river area came alive. The races were frantic rather than efficient and I have to say occasionally I was worried that they were going to end up in the water. The festival marks a reversal of the f...