An interesting day...

DAY 4: TURN LEFT HERE...OH. MY. GOD.

Today started badly when we discovered there was no water, still no gas and it was still hot. Emma was also still smelly having not showered the night before. With our GOLD preparedness, we were still ready and raring for our first day of training.

With a little anticipation, we headed downstairs to be met by 19 eager young leaders aged 16-27 years old, and a beautifully cut out welcome sign. Training began well and we were in full swing introducing ourselves and playing games, when the fan and the lights went out...no electricity either. Still, we carried on with our discussions and communication games, getting all the more confident as we went along. The girls were all fab, shared loads of ideas and really enjoyed the interactive activities we had planned. They also shared some brilliant Cambodian games like "fish net" which we will all take back to our units. First day of training over, we were all pleased to have received such positive feedback.

The evening is where our day got interesting. We decided to head into town for dinner for some Khmer food. We found a nice restaurant and all enjoyed our meal, especially Millie who not only finished the mahoosive portion in record time with only chopsticks, but also finished all 5 plates of watermelon given to us. Today was the first time our tuk tuk driver did not wait in town for us to drive us back home. This meant we had to negotiate our own tuk tuk back...

We thought we did well, there was lots of nodding and he repeated the street number as we pointed to our house on a map. However...we soon realised the roads looked rather unfamiliar. A different route perhaps? No. Thirty minutes later for a ten minute journey, we finally stopped for directions. After much stopping to get out and point at our map (thank you Sue for your torch!), some more directions, a guided tour of the disused .railway tracks, the market we didn't know existed, the pot holes which almost threw us out, the radio tower and the backstreets, we finally ended up back home. A full hour later, and with a very tired and deflated tuk tuk driver, we were definitely ready for bed. He was not very impressed with the $5 agreed price, to which he responded "Oh my God". Our thoughts exactly.

Lots and lots of GOLDen love,

Team Cambodia (now fully recovered from our tuk tuk journey)