Friday 11th February: Karaoke, More puppets and the Art of the Haggle. Having spent 11 days in Cambodia, I'm getting used to my new routines of taking cold showers, followed by applying liberal amounts of sunscreen and spraying myself in a halo of mosquito repellent. I've also become a bit more relaxed about Cambodian traffic (though when I ride tuk-tuks I still sometimes close my eyes when the driver goes through a busy intersection with no traffic lights). I...

Sunday 6th February: Making puppets in the Jungle Today was awesome (I know that term is overused, but really, today was AWESOME). About 15 of us set off at 7am this morning crammed onto the back of a flat bed truck, to journey 1 1/2 hours into the jungle for an 'Art Attack' project with a charity called Trailblazers. The night before, Em and I stayed up pretty late preparing for our fish and bird puppet-making workshop. Thankfully, we also had the help of Ro...

Saturday 5th February: Giants, Rabbits and BBQ It's now my fifth day in Siem Reap and I have been very busy puppeting away. On Wednesday I met the people from the Giant Puppet project, which is organised by a group of volunteers including Jig, an artist from the UK. We are also working with some young Cambodian art students who are extremely talented at what they do (as you will see in the photos). Over the next 2 weeks, we will be working with children from var...

Greetings from Siem Reap! Tuesday 1st February: Arrival After a long journey from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur (arriving 3.20am and leaving 11am), I finally made it to beautiful Siem Reap, Cambodia. The sun was out, the air was balmy and the airport looked more like a modern temple than a place for planes to land - it looked very welcoming as it stood nestled amongst palm trees, with its ornate pointy rooves, peaceful little water lily ponds and flowery gardens. I ...

Happy Australia Day! It's now 5 days to go before my volunteer trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia. I have pretty much got my packing sorted - just need to chuck all the items into a suitcase. I have 2 choices: a) very nice compact suitcase which unfortunately smells of kimchi i.e. Korean pickled chilli cabbage (due to previous episode with my dad's bag of souvenir Korean kimchi exploding whilst on the plane) or b) non-pungent suitcase which is slightly bigger and bulk...