Had a great time today teaching at Chakrya's and Borromey's school (see pictures in 'Battambang' album). So many of the children came up to me afterwards asking if I could come back again tomorrow. When I explained that I would be going to Phnom Penh tomorrow and then home to the UK at the end of next week their faces fell! They have made me promise to go and teach them when I am next in Battambang. Mid-afternoon I left the school, jumped on my motorbike, and s...

Had a busy couple of days - meeting Sak for coffee at his local cafe at 7am each morning, then spending the morning with Theara & Holly, taking Theara to the market on the back of the motorbike (she sits side-saddle, as do all the ladies here), and then helping to teach English at Battambang's Secondary School in the afternoons. Sak's sister (who is a trainee teacher there) took me along to meet her students the other afternoon and introduced me to the School...

I emerged from my room this morning to find the hotel swarming with military personnel. Apparently the Prime Minister of Cambodia - Hun Sen - is in town for the day! The roads were filled with trucks of soldiers. Sak's older brother - Say - later asked me whether I thought war had broken out again! Sak has to work today, Tuesday & Wednesday, so I spent the morning walking around Battambang, visiting the market, listening to people's conversations and trying ...

Sak & I met at 7.30am Saturday morning and went for breakfast (noodle soup & excellent sweet coffee with condensed milk) at his local streetside café. I was the only woman (and definitely the only barang!) but Sak's friends accepted me with smiles and made an effort to talk with me. We spent about an hour here before setting out on the motorbikes for Samlot; the most war-torn place in Cambodia. Samlot was the first place to be taken over by the Khm...

Arrived in Battambang around 12.30pm and met Sak at the Khemara Battambang Hotel where I will be staying for the next week. It's a new hotel (opened on my birthday last year in fact) and is very good for $12 a night. Our first stop was lunch as none of us had eaten breakfast (you don't when travelling on roads like these, otherwise you may well see it again!). There's a restaurant next door to the hotel called Cold Night Restaurant, so after checking-in we went...