Trekking phase completed with everyone more or less in one piece.

Today we are back in Chiang Mai after having finally finished our week-long trek through the jungle! Obviously it is nice that the hard work has ended, but most of us thoroughly enjoyed the week and found it to be a very rewarding experience.

The first few days consisted of gruelling walks uphill through dense rainforest. Of course, the heat and humidity made it all the more difficult. There was an almost audible sigh of relief when we reached the end each day.

The fourth day was a lot of fun. After a short trek (only two hours long) we were driven to an elephant camp, where we all enjoyed an elephant ride. It was an absolutely fabulous experience for everyone. Especially for Phil and CJ, who almost fell off their elephant when the seat slid off the elephant's back. To finish off, we had a very pleasant ride down the river on bamboo rafts.

Only one more day of proper trekking came after that, with today's trek lasting no more than an hour. At the end of yesterday's trek, we all plunged into a waterfall with a sense of euphoria. It was an undescribable relief to cool off after an exhausting walk. Today, we took a boat across the lake, and were driven back to Chiang Mai. The team did extremely well on the trek, and worked together effectively. Well done to all!

Now it's time for some R&R!

- Danny, Phil, CJ

Chiang Mai

Today we are in Chiang Mai, making our final preparations before we go to Chiang Dao for our week of trekking. Yesterday evening we caught the night sleeper train, and arrived at Chiang Mai at around noon. We arrived later than we were supposed to, as at one point our carriage became disconnected from the rest of the train.

When we had arrived safely here in Chiang Mai, we were driven to our accomodation. This turned out to be a girl guides' accomodation centre, with a swimming pool that apparently only the girls in the team can use.

Later on, some of the team are going to organise the guides for the trek (just to clarify, this is not the girl guides!), while others will be searching for tailors, with the possible aim of having a suit ready to pick up after we complete the trek.

We've probably said this before, but this WILL be the last time we can update the blog for quite a while. Promise.

- Danny

Update from Pak Chong

Only a quick update, as we have a train to catch. We are currently in Pak Chong, Thailand.

We took a couple of pick-up trucks from Battambang, and went to Poi Pet to cross the border into Thailand. The ride was extremely uncomfortable for all but those who went in the front of the car, who were only in mild discomfort as our transport went over the various bumps and holes in the road.

After acrossing the border, we took minibuses to Khao Yai national park, where we spent a couple of days trekking through the jungle, in preparation for our main trek. Fortunately, Thailand has much better roads, so the journey was more comfortable. Our accomodation was very overpriced - we spent more on a few tents on raised platforms than we spent on a proper hotel in Battambang.

Today we left the national park, and are about to catch a train to catch another train, which will take us to Chiang Mai overnight. After that, we will be going to Chiang Dao nation park, where our main trek will take place.

- Danny and Phil.

Going to Thailand

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Originally uploaded by teign_cambodia.

This is the first chance we've had in a while to write in this blog, and will probably be the last time for an ever longer period. The reason for this being that we are about to leave Cambodia and cross into Thailand, where we will almost immediately start our trekking through the national parks.

We have finished our week at the ASPECA 1 orphange, and we all had an amazing time. Two days were spent sanding the four houses that we were working on - a task pretty much all of us agreed was not very exciting. After the sanding was completed, we painted the houses. All of this was done with the help of the orphans, which allowed us to engage with the community at the same time.

The children were amazingly friendly and outgoing - as soon as we arrived children began attaching themselves to us. Two nights ago (our final night there), we had a party with music and dancing that lasted until midnight. We left yesterday, and several members of the team (mostly female, I must add) were very emotional about it. In the evening, we went out for a meal with the director, Mr Kun Vuthy.

Mr Vuthy also took us on a sightseeing tour. It was fun, but also a little painful, as we were sat in the open air in his truck, and the roads in Cambodia are usually a lot less flat than the landscape, making for a bumpy ride.

And now we are back in Battambang, waiting for the pickup trucks which will take us across to Thailand. So, this may well be the last time the blog is updated until we reach Bangkok right at the end of our expedition. It's been amazing so far, so let's hope the second half is as good.

- Danny

Not much to report

Today, we spent the day in transit from Siem Reap to Battambang (translates as "lost sticks", for some reason). The trip was rather bumpy, and that's putting it mildly. For a road between two major cities, it was very reminiscent of a dirt track. Most of the team spent a lot of time sleeping, and as the road was so bumpy they were thrown around quite a bit. Many amusing photographs arose from this.

And, to be honest, that was pretty much all that happened. After arriving, we walked to our hotel. On our arrival, it began to rain heavily. One or two silly people decided to go out in the rain, such as those daft sods featured in the photo.

That is all. Tomorrow, we are shopping for the things we will need for our work at the orphanage. We will then begin our week working with the children. How lovely.

- Danny and Matt.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat
Originally uploaded by teign_cambodia.

Rising ridiculously early, we set off in Tuk-Tuks to catch the sunrise over the famous temple of Angkor Wat. For many, it was a great shame, as there was quite a bit of cloud cover, and instead of a decent sunrise we only saw a gradual lightening of the sky.

However, it got better after that. The temples we looked around were truly magnificant, with stunning architecture and fascinating reliefs on the walls. Angkor Wat itself was amazing. Quite a few team members felt ill during the day, as it was a very warm day and we did lots of walking.

Some team members (Phil, CJ, Steve and Matt) ended up praying with a couple of Buddhist monks, and many bamboo flutes were bought for the orphans we will be helping next week.

By the end of the day, we were all feeling quite tired and hot. As we left each temple, we were attacked by the many vendors (most of whom are women and children) who try to make a sale by shoving products under people's noses and shouting thinks like "one dollar!". In the end, they became irritating in their persistence, even when we said "no".

More than once, one of us replied to a vendor "I don't want one."

The reply usually seemed to be: "No, you want two."

Five people stayed to see the sunset over Angkor Wat, while most decided that it would not be worth it, and came back to the guesthouse. Which brings us up to where we are now.

As we are leaving Siem Reap for the orphanage tomorrow, this could well be our last post for a very long time. So bye for now!

- Danny, CJ, and Shev.

Travels around Siem Reap

In the morning, Steve dragged us all out of bed early, with the exception of CJ, who dragged Steve out of bed. When we had all eaten breakfast, most of the group forayed into the town to see what there was to see, while several others stayed behind to carry out several tasks.

In town, we went to an internet cafe, went to the rather odious market, and took lots of photos, like a group typical tourists. There were several signs translated into English that lacked somewhat in linguistic accuracy. The prime examples being "Plastic bags waste ruin environmental quality" and "Please clean our water river".

For lunch, we ate at a restaurant where orphaned children are trained to cook and serve customers. Several people struggled with their meals, as it was all quite spicy. Having eaten, we split up again to do our own thing.

Dom, Matt, Danny and Lucy went to the bus station to pick up our missing kit bag. At the station, they were constantly harassed by a score of little Cambodian children, who seem to find Westerners such as ourselves fascinating. Fortunately, we retrieved our kit bag and returned to the hotel.

CJ, Steve, Phil, Sue, Alex and Eileen managed to get lost in the town, but eventually found what they were looking for (the Royal Gardens), so all was well.

Apart from that, nothing much of much importance happened that day, but we still all had great fun.

- Danny and CJ.

Phnom Penh to Siem Reap

Yesterday, we rose relatively early to pack out bags and get on the bus to go to Siem Reap (where we are now). However, before we left we visited the central market to look for some trinkets for ourselves, and a few bits we needed (none of which we found). We ended up haggling like demons for a rather fetching set of sarongs for the males. Before you jump to conclusions about the male members of the team, males in Cambodia wear sarongs quite often.

We also sampled some perculiar looking fruits, some of which had "weird red hairs" (Matt). The fruit was actually very tasty, and Matt would go as far as to say that they are tastier than any fruit in the UK.

The bus journey. We were dreading it before we got on the bus, as we knew it was a five hour journey to Siem Reap, and we didn't think the air-con would be much good. However, the air-con was good, and it was a fine journey. Along the way witnessed the way of life outside the urban areas, seeing lots of shanty houses and paddy fields. We also experienced our first monsoon rains. The flatness of the terrain was suprising, and if we saw a hill it was a big suprise.

Many amusing pictures were collected of various team-members sleeping. The most eventful period of the trip was when a microscopic spider started harmlessly crawling up the back of Sue and Amy's seat. Their cries of sheer horror attracted quite a bit of attention, until Tony stepped in to save the day. Hurrah. However, we do admit that we were perhaps a little inconsiderate by laughing.

Upon our arrival in Siem Reap, hoards of unwashed Tuk-Tuk drivers rushed to wave advertisments for their services in the bus window. When the bags were unloaded, we had to defend them from the drivers, who pressed in on us and tryed to drag our bags to their Tuk-Tuks. It was an interesting experience, to say in the least. At this moment we realised that we had left an equipment bag in Phnom Penh. Oops.

Fortunately, some Tuk-Tuks hired by the guesthouse we are staying at were there to give us safe passage. As we feared for our lives at this point, this came as a great relief. The guesthouse itself is very nice. It is large and well-furnished, with good rooms and a good restaurant. Even if the sink in one of the rooms has a tendancy to drain water onto the bathroom floor.

We unpacked and had tea down in the restaurant, followed by our team meeting, where we planned the next day and discussed one or two delicate issues that came up during the day. After this, we supposedly went to bed. Despite regretting staying up the night before, all of the males did the exact same thing again. Typical.

- Danny and Matt

Killing fields / S-21

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Originally uploaded by teign_cambodia.

Hello again. We are now writing from a different part of the country – the city of Siem Reap. The city is smaller than the Cambodian capital, but is much more pleasant, due to the smaller number of people, and (slightly) more tidy look to the streets. But more of that in the next entry.

The day before yesteday, we did some sightseeing, such as visiting the killing fields and S-21. We travelled to these by moped-drawn carriages named Tuk-Tuks. These were very enjoyable, especially on the off road sections. Although in Phnom Penh, the difference between the main roads and the off-road parts is quite small.

Both the killing fields and S-21 give an insight into the atrocities commited by the regime of Pol Pot in the seventies. It made for an interesting, if slightly grim, experience. We wont go into detail, but we learnt about the millions of people who died.

After doing this, we went to the British embassy to be briefed on safety issues that could arise during our stay in Cambodia. But not before lunch, of course.

In the evening, we went to a authentic Cambodian restaurant. The choice was small, so we all went for the "noodles with beef ball". When it came, a debate soon sprung up to decide what was actually meant by beef "balls". It is still not certain if they were cow testicles or not - sadly, not even the taste gave us the answer. When a few of us lied and claimed to have asked the cook and to have been told that they WERE testicles, a few faces went an interesting shade of green.

We then went to our rooms, where a large proportion of the boys ended up getting very little sleep, spending the night deep in discussion over various high-priority issues. In the end, several of the aforementioned males got rather vociferous in the coridoor with their opinions, until the manager came to complain.

But it was a great day, especially since we had largely countered the effects of jet-lag. The same cannot be said for the next morning.

- Danny, Matt, and Dom.