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...

Well, today has definitely been the hardest of all. None of us wanted to leave the orphanage this afternoon. It was so difficult to say goodbye to all the children and (for me) particularly Krouch. Her little face smiling & waving goodbye broke my heart and I struggled to keep control of my tears until I was in the car on the way back to Siem Reap. This orphanage will be my first port of call the next time I'm here. We spent the day playing - painting, dra...

On the way to the orphanage this morning we met the Director in Puok Market to buy the items we want to donate. Laura bought school uniforms for each child ($4 a set) and I bought 4 bicycles and 3 months worth of rice. We shared the cost of the flip-flops! We also got 10 new hammocks as the ones hung up beneath the house have huge holes in them - they were only $1 each and are really strong and should last ages - and some fruit - huge bunches of bananas and bags ...