Today was out last day at Makak Village. After expecting porridge for breakfast we quickly learnt that this wasn't to be the case as Wan had cooked traditional Cambodian curry complete with noodles and chicken - there was no denying that it was a tasty dish but most of the team's (Ed. Not me :-)) appetite had subsided a little from the previous four days of rice and noodles plus the fact that it was six thirty in the morning didn't really help.
We then headed to the school for a final farewell and during our journey discovered that the local children decided to graffiti it with a triangle before the cement had set - this was less aggressive than graffiti back home but was painful for Gini to see :'( (Ed. look up ‘The Youth of Today’ quotation by Socrates) We left the school with a heartfelt goodbye from the headteacher and gave promises of future support to the project - excellently spoken by our leader of the day Georgia W ;).
There had been some heavy rain the night and the road (made out of mud) we had to travel on had some pretty deep potholes - almost doubling the size of Farnham Lane's! (Ed. I’ll take your word for that one ladies) Unbelievable, yes but true. So after a fun yet terrifying drive to Siem Reap we were faced with a dilemma - we were booked into the wrong guest house which was next door. The situation was quickly resolved by Cliff, Sarath (our in country advisor) and our super duper dynamic accommodation team ( woop woop :P) (Ed. I wanted ‘woop woops too :-(). We finally checked in, grabbed some insane fruit shakes and had a quick dip in the pool followed by an hour or so of sunbathing.
Afterwards we headed off to view the sunset over Angkor Wat temple - the largest religious building in the world. Unfortunately after a steep walk up a set of hills and Miss Mac having to use Hatty's cut off trouser bottoms as sleeves we were told "no sunset today" as a result of predicted torrential rain which then greeted us on our way down to our tuk tuk's. After feeling a bit down we were ravenous for dinner and were expecting all our meals to be prepared as we had booked them in advance. Our belly's were eventually satisfied two and a half hours later - the team was not happy. After some complaining (Ed. tactful negotiations) by Annie and Jaime, they managed to get our meal with 40% off which soothed the tense atmosphere. After chatting with another world challenge team staying in the same guest house we headed off to bed for an early 4am wake up to see the sunrise over Ankgor Wat. Despite having a few setbacks in one day the team tried as hard as they could to have an optimistic outlook for the days ahead. (Ed. all sent to challenge us! :-))
Susie Kelly
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