All play and no work…but so tiring

Today is Saturday, so no work and all play.  I did have one room incident during the night on Friday.  Woke up to running water noises from the bathroom, which although it was 1.30 am I thought it best to investigate in case the place was being flooded.  Fortunately it wasn’t but the toilet cistern was not retaining water and wouldn’t flush.  So there I was in the middle of the night with the lid of the cistern off, poking around and waggling things like all good DIY people do!  Fortunately I managed to poke or waggle the correct bit and normal toilet service was resumed.  The skills you have to possess to volunteer abroad are innumerable!  So back to bed for a few more hours of sleep before getting up early, yet again, this time to go see the temples at Angkor Wat.

The temples are fantastic, such wonderful detail in some of the stonework depicting stories from the time they were built.  Sadly a lot of the stone Buddha’s and statues have no heads, a lot of them I think were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, where others were cut off by thieves and stolen to be sold in other countries.  However, wonderful as they are, there are so many of them, apparently spread over 25 miles,  and although I had the luxury of an air conditioned minibus between each temple, walking around them was exhausting.  So much so by the time we got to the most famous one, Angkor Wat itself, I don’t think I cared anymore!!! Sodath, my personal guide from the charity, was wilting quite a bit by then as well and complaining about the sun more than I was.  But then he had been up since 5 am to go to classes from 6 am to 7.30 am where he is doing civil engineering and he was going back to class again in the evening, and Sunday.  In fact he seems to do classes nearly every night and was excited about the fact he had none on Sunday afternoon.  You really need to work hard out here if you want to get a decent education.  So many people back home have it offered on a plate and just don’t even try!!

Despite my tiring day I still found the energy to go out on Saturday.  Very nice way to spend a Saturday night; a wander round the centre of Siem Reap, nice food, few glasses of wine, some healthy green tea to wash it down then off for a one hour foot massage.  Of course I should have gone straight back after the food massage, but one of the pubs was beckoning to me as I passed it tempting me in for that final glass of wine!! Then having realised I had acquired another mosquito bite and I had not brought my mosquito repellent out with me I decided to call it a night!!