Kampong Cham

After the hairiest bus ride I have ever been on we arrived in Kampong Cham for our language training. For the people I have not already told I will describe the journey.On the way here I was sittiing in the front seat of the bus which was very scary. I was alarmed by the great big crack in the windscreen and lack of seat belts. The driver was on his phone most of the way when he wasn`t leaning on his horn which seems to be the Cambodian Highway code. It seems to mean" Get out of the way"," I`m coming up behind you", I`m over taking on the wrong side of the road so get out of the way", which  is accompianied by flashing your lights you get the idea!!  He was watching our reaction in his mirror and found it hilarious. The other thing was if there were more people than seats they got plastic chairs out of the luggage hold and they sat the passengers on them in the aisle!!  The drivers mate was sitting on a plastic stool at the top of the stairs, fell off it and down the stairs when we swung a right! Which made us laugh.
We are staying in a hotel while we are here called Mekong Hotel and not surprisingly it is right on the banks of the Mekong about half way between Phnom Penh and Kratie where I will be based.
We get up about 6 30, go and have some breakfast and then cycle about 2 kms to the Western University for Khmai lessons. Our teacher is called Dara and he is very funny but makes you work really hard. We learn lots of vocabulary and then put it into longer and longer sentences, abit like Michel Thomas, Jane.
We are only learning to speak it as the script is beautiful but very difficult. We start at 8 and finish at 12 and are free for the rest of the day to learn our words.
Evenings are spent drinking, eating and doing various "stuff" on our laptops.
Last night, however, we cycled 3.5 kms to Wat Nakor to watch a traditional dance display. It was very beautiful but very different very slow and controlled and told a lot about tradional rural, Cambodian life.
When we had cycled back we went to the night market and had some food. I don`t feel it would pass any Food Safety inspection but I had noodles, vegetables and egg and a hot beer(only hot because it was sitting on the stall in the heat!) here were a lot of children begging but we have been told not to give them anything. It is very hard as the are beautiful children. As we walked away I saw a little girl put our left overs into a bag to take home.
I suddenly came over a bit "off" after that but was told by my medical friends it couldn`t have been that food but to put it down to a change of everything. I went back to the hotel and managed to Skype for the first time and it was lovely to talk to Ellie.
Feel much better this morning , slept in a while and decided to watch Coronation St on i player. Unfortunately you can`t do it here, which is probably a good thing at least I can still listen to the Archers on Podcast!
Anyway you are all up to date now. Here are some photos.

Sunrise on the Mekong

Our Hotel