My flight left Delhi airport at 11pm. The flight was 5.5 hours to Kuala Lumpur, then a 3 hour stopover, then 1.5 hours to Phnom Penh. I arrived in Phnom Penh at 10am. I got the visa on arrival at the airport, collected my bags, and left. I saw a lady at the exit holding a sign with my name on it and she took me on a tuk tuk to the volunteer house. It was such a change coming from India to here! It feels so relaxed here in comparison. And the streets look so clean! And its so much quieter! In India, you could pretty much always hear car horns blaring. It was a 30 minute journey to the volunteer house. It was a Guest House called Tattoo. I sat downstairs waiting for my room to be ready. There is a covered section outside which is the dining/communal area, and there is a kitchen at the end where a couple of ladies cook the meals. It took a few hours for my room to be ready which was annoying. After the flight, I just wanted to get into my room and shower and get changed and relax a bit. I ordered a drink and was somewhat baffled by the currency system here. They use Cambodian Riel, but also US Dollars. There are 4000 Riel to every US Dollar. The drink I bought cost 2000 Riel, I paid with a $10 note, and was given $9 and 2000 Riel change. It must be confusing for them using 2 currencies!
While waiting for my room, a girl came and joined me at the table where I was sitting and we got chatting. She was from Indonesia but was studying at LSE in London so we had quite a lot to talk about. She had arrived just a day before me and mentioned that she had just got back from church that morning so I was asking her more about it as I’ve missed church while I’ve been away. It turned out that she actually goes to my church back in London which was really cool. I finally got into my room after a few hours and it was quite nice! Below is a picture. It’s nice having a queen size bed all to myself compared to bunk beds at the last 2 places!

I settled in and then went to the evening service at the church the girl I met went to here. It was really cool, very different. A lot quieter than I’m used to, but I still liked it. A lot of the people there were volunteers or worked for NGOs so it was interesting to chat to people and see what they do. I headed back to the house afterwards and had dinner and met some more of the volunteers at the house including my 2 roommates who seem really nice. One is from Denmark and the other is from Albania but lives in Italy. I went to sleep early as I was pretty exhausted and we had to be up early for our orientation the next morning.