So I've been in Siem Reap for nearly a week now (since Tuesday morning) and I am just having the most amazing time ever. I don't start work until tomorrow so for the past few days all the new volunteers have been having an orientation weekend. There are 7 of us who are new, all from different countries - Norway, Australia, Germany, England - and because we have all spent so much time together in the past few days we are already really good friends.

Every volunteer gets given a bike which is their own responsiblity for the duration of their stay so we chain it up every time we go out, and if it gets punctured the first day it is given to you (in the case of Alice) you need to pay for the repairs, although compared to Western standards it is very cheap, perhaps 1000 riel which is $0.25 or 16p perhaps. Cycling here is crazy, there are no rules of the road and horn beeping is very common. They drive on the right hand side of the road also which is a bit mind boggling to begin with especially seeing as sometimes you will have traffic coming at you on both sides of the road, but it's something you just have to get used to. There is no indicating, the zebra crossing lines appear to be pointless as traffic doesn't stop for pedestrians and give way lines don't exist, it's really just the largest vehicle that has the right of way. We literally take our lives into our hands when we go out cycling and just make a dash for it if we need to cross a junction. I really like cycling in the city now, but I remember my first cycle was horrifying as nobody wears helmets (they don't even sell them anywhere) and the brakes are pretty dodgy which made for an interesting ride. In Cambodia it is bad luck to stop your bike on the road or look behind you when cycling, which means tuk-tuk and moto drivers will often just barge onto the road without waiting for a space in the traffic.

On Thursday we got a tour of the city which included the markets, the post office, the library, Western supermarkets, all places which we will need to know the whereabouts of. The markets were the most fascinating. The Old Market in the centre of town is like an Aladdin's cave and you can literally buy anything you could ever need in there, from flip flops to frying pans as well as fresh Cambodian food. Although when I say fresh I mean chunks of meat and fish that have been sat out in the open air all day with flies swarming all over them - most of the older volunteers seem to have become vegetarians since living here. The New Market further out from town is really like a large wholesale market where people from the remote villages come at 1 or 2 in the morning to buy produce to take home and sell at their own local markets in their villages. This market seemed not to have seen so many tourists and so a lot of locals were staring at us. The food section of this market is even worse than in the Old Market and we saw buckets full of live squirming eel, women skinning frogs still alive as well as pigs heads. There really seems to be no standard of hygiene - no gloves, hair nets or special clothes, instead the women sit cross-legged on the same table as their produce.

On Friday we decided to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat and so left our guest house at 5am!! It was an amazing experience but unfortunately the sky was very cloudy so we didn't get a great light - something to do with it being the end of the rainy season - so I think I will go back later in the year. After that we spent the rest of the day visiting some other Angkor temples and didn't return home until about 4pm which made it a very long day. As it was a Friday we also thought we should experience a Cambodian night out... Siem Reap is well known for its nightlife with many pubs doing either $1 cocktails or Buy-One-Get-One-Free, as well as Angkor draft beer only being $0.50!!

Saturday was a lazy day - getting up late and then visiting the Artisan Silk Farm about 16km out of Siem Reap which meant getting a tuk-tuk. The Silk Farm was really interesting and it supported the local people giving them fair and decent wages which was really nice to hear. After the tour we went to the gift shop and whilst everything was expensive compared to what you can buy in the markets here, it was still really cheap by Western standards, especially seeing as the silk process is so time consuming. In the evening we had a very interesting tuk-tuk ride to a concert run by the Angkor Children's Hospital. Our driver did not speak any English and took us in the complete wrong direction meaning we were 15 minutes late to the concert!

Our orientation week is nearly over with just a Kmer language class and a visit to the Floating Villages left, and then it's school time on Monday!