Finally

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Geo: 13.4691, 104.041

It seem to take forever but I finally arrived in Siem Reap about 2pm local time on Sunday.
Spent the rest of the day trying to get oriented but thats not easy in a city that seems to have no organisational structure at all but I'm starting to get an idea of the lay out. That evening some of the girls that are also working on the projects took me under their wing and showed me a few places like where to eat where not to eat, how much you should expect to pay for things etc.
Had a fantastic meal and thankfully my fear of not being able to stick with my vegi diet is unfounded. there is plenty on offer and its cheap and very good.
This is quite an amazing place the traffic is like organised chaos and much to my surprise there are very few accidents, there seems to be 2 main rules the biggest vehicle has the right of way unless you are entering traffic from a side street then they get right of way.
You can have as many in a vehicle as you can fit and so far I've seen 6 on a motor bike 12 in a car and about 30 in the back of a truck, it really is a sight to behold.
On Monday I went out to the project for the first time the lady who we are building the "house" for is a widow with 5 children 3 of which live with her. The place that she currently lives in can only be described as appalling, the level of poverty here is beyond anything that I could imagine. But by the time we finish she will have a house that is water proof with walls a kitchen and a vegi patch, doesnt sound like much but compared to what she lives in now it will be a palace.
It takes us an hour by Tuk Tuk to get to the project and about half of that time is spent on something resembling a goat track. We work from 8 til 1pm by that time its to hot to be doing much else.
The people we work with have interesting ways of building things and the lack of suitable tools makes the job about 10 times harder and about10 times longer for us to do the simplest of tasks, but thats how they do things and thats all they have to work with. There is no such luxury as workplace health and safety and the communication difficulties add a whole other dimension.
The great thing is the people are so friendly and happy, the children are lovely and so keen to try and learn some English that at every opportunity they will come and talk to you.
Animals are somewhat revered well that is until its time to eat them ( and that goes for the cats and dogs as well as the pigs, water Buffalo and chickens) we had an experience yesterday where we helped a neighbor of the project lady to tie a live 15 stone pig on to the back of a motorcycle, unfortunately I didn't get any photos of that but believe me its not something you see in down town Melbourne or Cairns, although I would like to give it a go just to see the reaction. Here it doesn't even raise an eyebrow.
The currency situation is confusing you can use either US dollars or the local Real which when converted 4000 Real equals $1 US and you can pay using a mixture of both, you have to barter for everything and there is no way of actually knowing whether you are being ripped off or not, but needless to say locals pay far less than foreigners.

Sorry about the lack of photos but Im still trying to work out how to attach them as soon as I do I can show you some of the things Im talking about.

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Comments

[damon_thompson]

Sounds awesome! Your description of the place reminds me of King's Cross, except the 15-stone pig on the bike.

[jl_skp]

Hiya :) Sounds like a completely different world over there. I luv reading ur blog entrys and I'm glad ur doing well. I have the pics from Rainbow but struggling to send them.. might have to do it 2 parts.. Stay well! :)