As Rachel said in her message on my Message Board, Monday did feel like 'back to school' day, especially as I had a new uniform - white blouse and long black Khmer wrap-around skirt with gold embroidery at the bottom! My position is General Manager and I've been working 8-4 this week while the owners are still in Australia. The staff are lovely and have been very welcoming. They are also very hardworking and competent. This is pretty much a settling-in week, gett...

I arrived back in Siem Reap on Wednesday afternoon to find a bottle of wine, orchids, and a lovely note in my room from my new boss. The bottle, however, is still chilling in my fridge as I spent the following 48 hours bed bound with flu-type symptoms. It obviously wasn't onset malaria as by Friday evening I was feeling much better! Not having eaten for 2 days I ventured to the newly opened Pizza Company and had a double pepperoni thin & crispy (for medicinal...

Monday evening I had dinner with my friend Andy Brouwer who has been coming to Cambodia for 15 years and finally moved here a year ago. We had dinner at the oldest Indian/Nepalese restaurant in Phnom Penh - Mount Everest - where I had an excellent chicken tikka massala. It was good to catch up with Andy's news. He works for a tour company in Phnom Penh with Nick Ray, Editor of 'Lonely Planet' and has his own fantastic website on Cambodia. Today, Tuesday, I spent...

I left Battambang at 1pm on Friday and arrived in Siem Reap - after the most horrendous journey road-wise - at 6pm. National Route 6 (the stretch between Sisophon and Siem Reap) must be the worst road in Cambodia. Each time I travel on it the bulldozers & diggers (which are supposed to be repairing it) have made it even worse. The highlight of the journey was a boy on a buffalo who posed for me to take his photo. I was, however, in one foul mood by the time I...

Monday, I left Kampong Chhnang around 9am, stopping for a breakfast of bai cha such chrouk nung gaffee dteuk doc'o k'dau (fried rice with pork & hot coffee with sweet milk) and finally arrived in Battambang around noon. The distance from Kep to Battambang is only 461km but it had taken me 8 hours of intense driving, and even with a nights sleep in the middle my eyes felt like they were out on stalks! The roads here really are bad - the National Routes are onl...