Chapter one: first impressions

So I bet couldn't sleep waiting for reports from that far away country from which nobody talks about called Cambodia. Well, here they are, first hand.

We got here yesterday, after a long long flight in which we mainly slept. The good surprises were that the flight from London to Bangkok was quite empty, so we could lay down and sleep. As for the Bangkok-Phnom Penh part, they gave us food even if the flight lasted less than an hour!! And although we had to eat kind of in a hurry, in less than 10 minutes, the food was really good!

When we got here, it was 6 pm, pitch dark, quite warm and with plenty of mosquitoes flying around. Two people from the project picked us up in a tuck-tuck, and on we went to the hotel. Apart from some salamanders running down the corridor and cockroaches in the bathroom, it's pretty clean, we have internet, air conditioning and food is quite good, so no problemo!

Tomorrow we are moving to Battambang, our last stop before the small village where we are staying, Sampov Lun. We have talked with a doctor from here who warned us about the dangers and problems in the area: in boca al luppo!

On the touristy happy side, there are great places in Phnom Penh like the National Museum, with many statues of Buddha and Hindu divinities, the Royal Palace, the silver Pagoda, the wats (Buddhist temples) and the central market.

(more pictures later)

On the kind-of-more-negative-but-also-exotic side, streets are quite crowded, with much traffic, the heat is intense (though not as bad as I thought), the smells are kind of what you would expect from sewer and it is quite touristy, so you can’t walk a single mile without being offered food, guides, a tuk-tuk…

All in all, the least I can say is that this is another world, with many different and surprising things but, as this is only a report of my first impressions, I will end here for today. More to come…