Pchum Ben week!!

Sorry nothing for a while my internet at my house is down. I have moved into a great house I share with an Australian called Irena who is also a volunteer. It is a big house raised in stilts (piece of mind when it floods!) and has a nice veranda and hammocks in which I spend a lot of time reading. It feels much more settled to be in a house and sometimes we cook but normally too much monkey business and we go out.

View from my friends house

Klang - strongest, cheapest and best

It is Pchum Ben, Festival of the Ancestors in Cambodia this week. Buddhist tradition demands Cambodians visit many pagodas over two weeks. Food, flowers, rice and gifts are given to the monks to convey to the afterlife so the dead do not haunt the living. They are up all night so lots of music, praying (over loud PAs) and earplugs. I have a week off work which is a bit weird as I have not stopped since arriving. Lots of businesses are closed and it is tricky to get stuff. I have visited beautiful Kep with some friends for a swim in the sea and crepes at the yacht club - very posh but no yachts, or other people for that matter. We also visited http://www.jasminevalley.com/ to see some other friends who were staying there, have a look, it was paradise and the guy who runs/built it was really nice.

I went swimming and kayaking in the upper river here at a friends house they have in the river - it was very very beautiful in lush rice fields and jungle rising into the elephant mountians. I kayaked all around the backwaters through thin palm fringed waterways going past tiny hamlets and plenty of friendly and curious people.

My bike

Breakfast khymer style

Work wise I have been busy with this UK/China tour and have been working with another volunteer, an arts consultant from the UK, to develop the strategy and organise away days with Epic management team. The rain has been bad here recently, 200 tourists had to be evacuated from Siem Reap the other day, it is rainy season I suppose and it hasn't rained much really. I was planning on going up to the Cardomom mountains, apparently one of the last intact forest ecosystems left in SE Asia but it is tricky to get to at the best of times and with the rain being so bad I decided it would/could/probablywould end in some kind of accident especially as there are tigers/elephants up there.

My girlfriend Maggie is coming out to see me in about 10 days we are going to spend some time in Phnom Penh before going up to Siem Reap to Ankor Wat etc then come back down to Kampot and then over to Koh Rong Samloem island http://www.lazybeachcambodia.com/Home.html which is apparently heaven. Not normally my bag but will give it a go for three nights. Take is easy, signing off