Arrival in Siem Reap

We successfully managed to get to the airport in Kuala Lumpur. The panic about what we had printed off from the night before was justifed, as technically we needed the other piece of paper, but the guy on the bus let us off with a typical "stupid westerners" tut! On arrival at the airport we spent our last Malaysian money on a early morning breakfast of chicken and chips (we were good though, we went to Marrybrown, a Malaysia fast food place, rather than McDonalds!) and a cookie! Checking in was all surprisingly easy and stress free, and the only slight confusion came as we went through the gate. There were 3 flights going out of the same place, and nobody really seemed to know which way it was to which flight! As nice as I'm sure Hong Kong or the place in China that the other flight was going to are, we thought we'd really rather get on the plane to Siem Reap! We managed eventually, and got settled on the plane for our flight. We were slightly confused to hear that it was 2 hours, since we'd thought it was only 1, but it turned out the time difference was to blame, and an uneventful flight later we landed at Siem Reap's surprisingly lovely airport.

For those of you who don't know, we are spending 6 weeks in Siem Reap, volunteering with a charity called Globalteer. They run projects all over the world, but we are teaching in a school called Grace House in a small village about 3km from Siem Reap. We got met from the airport by Rose, who is a local who works for Globalteer, in a tuk-tuk. A tuk-tuk is a rickshaw with a motorbike rather than a bike (it gets its name because that's apparently the sound they make!). She took us to the Globalteer House, where we will be staying whilst we're here. It's a little further out from town that we were expecting, but the house itself is lovely. We have our own room, which is en-suite and very nice indeed. The only bad thing about it is that it's on the 3rd floor, which means there's 64 steps (we counted) to go up and down everytime you want to get some water or want to go out. Luckily there's a little restaurant on the 4th floor, so we're not too far away from food anyway!

The view from our room

Rose left us to get settled in and to relax for a few hours, after we told her that we'd been up at 2am. We spent the time sleeping, watching TV (we're loving having a TV with 70odd channels after not having had a TV for 3 weeks!) and eating lunch upstairs, which was very tasty. After this, Rose took us into town and showed us things like the supermarket, the swimming pool, where the main restaurants and bars are, etc. It's a really nice town, and all the people seem really friendly so that bodes well for our time here! After that, we went back to the Globalteer House, where all the other volunteers were collecting. There were about 9 other volunteers here when we arrived, all female, mostly Australian, although there were two Brits and an American as well, and a mix of ages, from our age upwards. They all seem friendly and on the first night we went out for dinner with them all to a very tasty (if slightly more upmarket than we're used to) vegetarian restaurant. We had a nice chat with a British girl who is our age, who said that most of the rest of them are on slightly bigger budgets than us backpackers, seeing as most of them are here on holidays from their jobs at home, rather than as part of longer travels. We'll have to watch our money situation!

The following day, we were taken by Rose to visit Grace House, the school we are volunteering in. It is run by a British couple, and has been opened for nearly 2 years. We were shown round the school and introduced to the classes we'll be teaching. John is working with the teenage class, and Susie is helping with a class of 8-12 ish year olds. The kids all come to the school for 2 hours per day, and so there is one group in the morning and one in the afternoon. This is because they go to state school for the other half of the day. Grace House also provides help for its students for state school, by providing uniforms, exercise books and bikes for the children from the poorest families. They also provide community help by giving rice, repairing houses and taking people to hospitals/doctors when needed. They also have one room that is used by local women (mostly mothers of students at the school) to make handbags, which are then sold at shops in towns, and they are currently setting up a classroom that will be used to teach electricians, as the current training in Cambodia is apparently very insufficient, and quite a lot of people die from electric shocks due to dodgy wiring.

John's Class

The kids in both our classes seem lovely, and are very keen to learn. Each class has a Khmer teacher who runs the English program (to give it some continuity) and our job as volunteers is to run the other class of the day, which is a kind of general knowledge class, on the topic of the week. Neither of us have very much to do for this first week though, because Susie has another volunteer in the same class as her, who is leaving at the end of the week, and John's Khmer teacher is planning the other lessons on Pchum Ben, a festival that is next week, which unfortunately means there isn't any school next week.

After our first couple of days in Siem Reap, we felt fairly settled in, and that we knew a bit of what was going on! We'll blog again soon to let you know about the 2 weeks since we arrived!