Thursday 5th Jan saw us up early & off to New Hope School for our usual morning of chaos & mayhem hopefully helping the Cambodian children learn to speak English.

New Hope is in Mondul3 one of the poorest areas of Siem Reap & to give the people an opportunity to break the poverty cycle New Hope School is educating the children not only in Khmer but also teaching them another language (in this case English) so they can then get a job in the tourism industry where they can then earn a wage & so help their families. In Cambodia they do not have any social welfare & so without work they starve.

After our morning session at the school we then headed out for a visit to the "Local Market" where the Khmer people shop for their daily essentials. This market was a real eye opener with everything from live eels & fish, eggs chicken, pork, every possible fruit & vegetable, herbs & spice through to your household goods, clothing shoes, handbags, watches, mobile phone accesories & even gold & silver jewellery some of which was being made as we watched. It was truly an amazing sight. After two hours we then Tuk Tuked back to Golden Village (our oasis ) to relax & refresh before some of us were off into town "Pub Street" to be precise to Le Tigre De Papier (The Paper Tiger) restaurant for our Khmre cooking class.

Upon arrival we sat down & had to select an entre & main course dish we wished to eat & then off we walked into the local market to buy the necessary ingrediants fresh from the vendors to prepare our dishes. Another sensory overload of sights & smells & sounds. Fantastic! & the people are so friendly.

Then it's back to the restaurant to prepare our selected dishes which included salads, various Amok dishes, a selection of fried Spring Rolls & even a type of Khmer Canelloni. After 2 hours of laughing & learning how to peel,shred,chop & cook the most amazing ingredients our dishes were done & as you can see from the photo they were delicious. We then sat down & tried as best we could to eat it all but once we had been served the Pumpkin custard (which we helped prepare also) we were all completely stuffed. Kirsty Kelly asked for the left over spring rolls to go in a doggy bag for us tomorrow! Yum!

What an amazing diverse full on day. Loved it all. Cambodia is such an amazing place.

Can't wait to see what we get up to tomorrow!