Empires of the East expedition diary: Update Four

Angela and Charlotte write...
"After a busy, but exhilarating weekend at Angkor, work resumed as normal. In true flexible Cambodian style we arrived at the lovely Wat Damnak expecting to be continuing to refine our builder's bums laying bricks and scraping walls only to be in for a surprise.

Where on Thursday there had been walls which were only half scraped (even though our love, blood and lots of sweat had been put in), there were now glistening white walls. The monks had been busy without us! So with so much progress having been made - the two top rooms painted, the outside walls done and the rickety, but charming wood hand-made scaffolding deconstructed, we moved on to our next house with plans to return later in the week.

Pnom Krom, the site for our third house had a very different feel from the first site on the edge of Siem Reap. Physically stunning, a raised road with adjoining houses traversed through rice paddies with water buffalo and fisherman. Compared to the first site, Pnom Krom was much more remote and the perception of poverty was heightened when set against the richness of the vistas.

The build itself was extremely hot work. With such little shade and temperatures of 41 degrees in the sun and 38 degrees in the shade , we had to take shifts in order to keep from passing out. Due to this the house progressed more slowly than the others, but eventually on Wednesday afternoon just as the heavens opened to bring us the relief that we’d been waiting for, we finished. Some of the group had a bit of a rain dance in celebration of both the rain and the fact we’d finished! Then we had the traditional ceremony inside the house in order to bless it. Other than one dodgy moment when the house was being pushed upright because it had slumped, this all went swimmingly.

Thursday morning we had a fascinating question and answer session with the monks on Buddhism and learnt that although the non-monks have only five main rules to follow, monks have over 200. We also discovered that the reason that monks have to shave not only their hair, but also their eyebrows was that so they couldn’t make signs with them to attract girls! Also note, that monks are allowed to lie if they’re joking! The afternoon was spent resting with a few attending English lessons which quickly deteriorated into charades.

This brings us nicely to today which we are spending back at Wat Damnak to progess work on our second site. We’ll let you know how it goes soon. For now we send all our love back home and hope everyone’s not too jealous!"

Click here >> for Khmer lessons and temple visits with monks
Click here >> for Visiting Sihanoukville and project work begins...
Click here >> for building work and Siem Reap
Click here >> for lessons with the monks
Click here >> for blessing ceremonies as the building work ends...
Click here >> for Phnom Penh and sailing the Mekong



Name: VentureCo
Address: The Ironyard, 64-66 The Market Place, Warwick
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Tel: 0845 344 7523