Turning 29

Sunday 16th September

Turning 29 was not nearly as bad as I had expected and despite being millions of miles away from my family and friends, I think it's safe to say I had one of the best birthdays ever!

As luck would have it my birthday fell on a Sunday this year which happened to be the group’s day off from language training. It’s actually quite amazing how well and how quickly everyone in the group has bonded. We all come from quite different walks of life and countries and within days of meeting, we seem to know each other really well. I mean, you don’t often get to hang up people’s underwear on the washing line after only a matter of days of meeting them. Needless to say, they seem to have got to know me quite well too. Not without creatively dropped hints during the 10 short days I have known them, my new friends managed to organise a whole day of fun and surprises for me! I think it’s important for everyone’s well being and general mental health to enjoy at least one day per year which is totally dedicated to me! The birthday started at midnight with ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in four different languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch.

When I woke up in the morning I opened cards in bed and received a bilingual dawn chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ again (this time English and Gaelic! - we are such a diverse multicultural group!). Then it was pancakes and coffee for breakfast and a tuk tuk down to the Mekong River. It was surprise followed by surprise the whole day. I imagined we were all meeting at the river to have lunch or go for a walk but when I arrived there, everyone was sat aboard a huge boat singing 'Happy Birthday’ (again) ready to be taken down the Mekong and then up one of its tributaries. We spent the whole day on the boat; enjoying the beautiful scenery we passed, waving at the people fishing or bathing and stopping off to visit a Buddhist pagoda and later on a community of silk weavers. We had lunch on the boat, played games, took a nap, and took lots of photos and luckily for us it did not rain at all (it is rainy season so usually the heavens open for a down pour for an hour or so every day). Near the end of our journey we even stopped at a ‘safe’ place to swim so most of us piled into the muddy brown water still fully clothed. It was so refreshing and all thoughts of our health and safety briefings about contact with water in Cambodia and the various diseases and infections we might contract went flying out the window!

But that was not all - when we got back to the house and had all showered and scrubbed the mud out of our toe nails, the evening party began. We had dinner, made speeches and danced the night away. ‘Happy Birthday’ was sung at least twice more and the guys had organised a birthday cake, flowers and a treasure hunt in the Khmer language to find my presents! It was a really wonderful day and my new friends made me feel very special!

Missed you all heaps tho’ xx