So after we get over the fact that we have been full on scammed with exchanging money at the Thai-Cambodian boarder we check into our hostel, the dancing frog (fergie would love it) and plan our visit to Angkor Wat! Angkor Wat is the oldest religious temple in the world that is still in use! We do a 3 day tour of all the surrounding temples which gets a bit repetitive and tiring in the 40 degrees heat! And we defiantly save the best till last! On the 3rd day we watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat! To do this we have to get up at 4am and take a torch to find our spot! It's very surreal driving through the streets of Cambodia on a tuc tuc and being the only people around! We are one of the first people there but as the morning goes on hundreds of people pitch up inside the temple grounds to watch the sunrise, which is beautiful. After the sunrise we walk around the grounds and are really lucky to see a monk ceremony being performed! 2 elder monks are performing a ceremony on 2 child monks which involves chanting and shaving their heads! A bit different to our christenings which involve a bit of water splashing and a piss up! But to see this in the oldest temple in the world is special!
Cambodia strikes us as the place that ha the most 'street children' these are children who work on the streets selling anything from bracelets to books to tourists. They start from a very young age of 4 or 5 and some of the older children are often seen begging with a baby in arms! As we sat eating at one of the street vendors one night a little boy about 6 years old begs us for some food, we give him our rice which he quickly scrans down, he then sees a police man who has obviously been chasing him and he runs away! It is very sad for us to see but we realise this is normality for these children!!

The next week is a week that will stay in our hearts forever! We volunteered for a week at an orphanage called ACODO. ACODO has around 65 orphans living with them, most of them have been found on the streets and have had terrible experiences! A lot of the children are there because they have too many siblings for their parents to afford and some are there just because their parents are divorced! In Cambodia if 2 people get divorced the mother is expected to take care of all the children yet the father gets all the possessions including house and money! So the mother has no choice, if she wants some of her children to survive she must sell one or 2 of her other children! It is very brutal and sad!
ACODO also cares for disabled children who need medical care! They raise money and pay for the childrens medical bills and also helps children pay for further education fees!

After recieving our bright orange orphanage t shirt we turned up for work (on our bycicles that we rented to get to n from our new job) we were thrown straight in to the deep end at 8am sharp...... With no research done for our class, 10 screaming kids and our first alarm wake up in 3 months we were thinking what have we let our selves in for!!
However Deano jumped straight to the front of the class and taught the kids real English ( Derbyshire not mancunian) with great assisstance from Anna n Kee!!
First lesson over after an hour we were thinking a lil research and discipline we would have this teaching larc sussed!!
We now had 4-5 hours playtime with the kids and we got out our presents which we kindly brought the day earlier, football skittles basketball etc, anything that Dean thought he could beat them at!! Ha!!
So after our first morning we cycled to get lunch and we were that knackered we ended up having a 2 hour kip, cos we were so exhausted!! When we returned the older kids had arrived from school and the younger ones go off to school. So we thought we might have a better lesson,, how we were wrong they were more outta control then the younger ones!! We had our hands full for sure!! The next couple days were pretty much the same, until Dean decided to kit out the toilet blocks with 9 showers so whilst he was busy with that the girls got really attached to some of the younger orphans, not to mention them finding the 25 salt water crocodiles on the back yard... TRUE!!

With the showers fitted and the girls feeling confident enough to take an English class at Oxford university we spent our last day at ACODO letting the kids listen to techno which they loved dancing to. Having had a wicked time at ACODO we left with memories that will stay with us forever.
After an exhausting week, we treat ourselves to a few drinks and meet up with Ronan again, we end up in a private karaoke booth singing old time classics! The booths are thankfully soundproof! After sadly saying goodbye to our bicycles and Ronan we depart Siem reap and head for the capital!