Well I have arrived. Met work colleagues this morning and then spent day looking at houses. I am moving into this little house on Sunday - have to go and buy useful things like mops, cloths and a plate or two tomorrow. Pailin is a village/town with a couple of places to eat and some very good coffee. My landlord owns one of the cafes. I will however have to go to Battenbang for a night life but it is only just over an hour away.

Well the real adventure starts. Left PP very early (before breakfast) first stop was a road side cafe which served beef and noodles - I was skeptical that I would like them for breakfast but they were great and just what I needed. The journey was through very green and sometimes flooded fields (not as many as there should be, this has been a very dry wet season so far). Every village had a Wat that was decorated in a traditional way. On the way we stopped and ha...

Bike training was great fun. We were taken to a large empty car park and allowed to play on the type of bike I will be given. It should be a Honda Dream 125 with 4 gears!! Luckily they are instinctive and I got the hang of them very quickly. The bike in England involved finding the right gear, this one you have to go up through the gears and then back down - much easier. (There is also a display that tells you which gear you are in.)

Jazz in Phnom Penh - great evening with Ian and Amy. Lessons are going well and even the guest house staff are trying to help me learn (he wouldn't give me my key until I asked in Khmer!!)

First weekend in a new country as a worker not a tourist, it's very different. Saturday I confirmed that I am a shop kind a girl rather than a market type. I need space when I am buying something. On Sunday Zoe invited us on a boat trip to celebrate her teacher's graduation - he is now going to study for a masters degree in India. We went up the Tonle Sap to the Mekong and just drifted along - this is a common way of celebrating anything in Cambodia. In the afte...