Mel’s Blog

Well here I am, two feet firmly planted on the ground in the capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.

*nb- friends and family who are planning on coming to visit me, please don’t let this put you off!

The trip was relatively pain free, except for the final leg from Hong Kong to Phnom Penh where we had the luck of getting one crazy pilot in a hurry who liked to imitate a rollercoaster on our ascent and descents. I say descents because on this trip I was lucky enough to experience my first “missed attempt” as the pilot put in when coming into Phnom Penh airport.

My interpretation of that is that (I’m guessing) the pilot was told to hang on for a minute until the airspace was clear but instead decided to put the petal-to-the-metal and attempt to squeeze in before the other guy, which saw us plummeting crazily towards earth with us poor unsuspect innocent passengers white knuckled, gripping the armrests, praying to sweet Jesus. In the end, our guy didn’t get in quick enough and at the last minute we were forced to pull up and retreat to a safe altitude where we hung out an waited our turn like a good little 737. This retreat understandably involved an ascent where we felt like we were being forced through our seats and some sickass banking (turning) as the pilot took out his frustration on the plane as you often witness with road ragers.

We then tried a second and successful time to land in Phnom Penh Airport.

But no problems, all was fine, don’t worry Mum!

The luggage (all 50kgs of it) was all cool and our In Country Manager (Hour) came and met us at the airport and customs and visas and all that jazz was a total breeze, we just walked straight through!

Its not too hot and understandably reminds me a lot of Malaysia, the climate, the smells, the people… I have just taken today to saok it all in, explore a little of Phnom Penh along the river and taken my first tuk tuk ride, which of course we got ripped off on. $3 US for four people still isn’t bad in the scheme of things…

Met with Patty today who has just finished working with SABORAS (www.saboras.org ) and is catching a plane back to Melbourne tomorrow. It was great to meet her and get a bit more of an insight about what it was like to work with that organisation, although our roles will be quite different.

Everyonés stoked to be here, although there’s an air of surreality (is that a word?) around, I think it’s hard to imagine that we’re all going to be here working for a year; it feels a bit more like a holiday at this stage and at any minute we could turn around and catch a Sundy roast at the Folks’ place, or a footy game…

I am dead tired and am sure I will sleep well tonight in my little hotel room up four flights of stairs!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 1:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.