Click the above to read Mollie Mckenzie's article

Two groups of students recently returned from three weeks in Cambodia, during which students organised all their own tourist-related exploration, completed a community project and undertook a trek through rural parts of Cambodia to immerse themselves in the lives of the people who live there. The comments below are excerpts from the emails sent home to the families of one group .............

Already we have accomplished so many things; whether it was eating snails and crickets or building our team relationship whilst running through Kampot drenched from the rain trying to find some lunch.

We already feel as though we have got to know so much about the history of Cambodia and seen exactly how the locals live. The first couple of days in Phnom Penh were packed with lots of adventures including wandering through the night markets and getting a tour through the S21 genocide museum and the Killing Fields. Both of those things made us feel very alert of what had happened in Cambodia in previous times and realised just how lucky we really are.

In Kampot we organised a tour to some temple caves in Tuk Tuks and also went through the mountains to the Bokor Hill Station, which is situated 1,000 feet above sea level. We all enjoyed the great views and ended up being a part of one of our bus driver's marketing videos for his tour business, which included a singalong to "a home amongst the gum trees", which was pretty random.

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All of us have appreciated everything we have done so far and can't wait for all the adventures we have ahead of us.

We continued our adventures in Kampot and Kep and had a wonderful beach day at Rabbit Island which was full of swimming, sleeping, quite a bit of sunburn and eating delicious fresh crabs that were cooked straight from the ocean.

After Kampot and Kep we went straight to our project on an eight hour bus ride. Our project was located on the Tonle Sap lake in a Primary School. Over the 4 days we worked there, we achieved so much. We managed to build a brick wall about one and a half meters high to keep the soil from sliding down into the lake, mixed piles of cement for a new floor in one of the classrooms, stripped large amounts of old paint off the front gates and painted murals of the Tonle Sap and school yards on the main building. Whilst doing all the work, we still found plenty of time to interact with the kids in a casual setting in their breaks, and we also spent an hour after their school day teaching them basic counting, the alphabet and the macarina.

Our home stay was amazing - the family was extremely welcoming and made us feel very at home. We have enjoyed some of the best food of our trip and our plates kept getting renewed with local delicacies every time we emptied them. The sleeping accommodation was also fantastic - one large room perfectly suited to some ripper card games.

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We were all pretty exhausted after working at the community project (so much cement mixing...) so we had a pretty laid back time in Siem Reap exploring markets, swimming at the pool, and buying school supplies with our remaining fundraising money for the school, which we then presented to the director while he was in town for a seminar. It was then time for our trek.

After meeting with our rather eccentric tour guide we walked through farming villages and rice fields, which was hot but fairly easy going, given that in Cambodia hills and mountains are myths. After a boat cruise we arrived at our home stay, which was a house on stilts. Because the dry season is only just starting, we were surrounded by water and unable to move around the village freely. This was a novelty until one of our members got sick. By the end of the night, four others had joined them, so it was a pretty eventful night for the whole team.

That night we decided as a team that, due to the ease of walking we experienced during our first day, the five day trek would be done over three instead. The next day was a bike day, and we all saddled up for a day of riding. Those who were still under the weather hopped into a tuk tuk (aka 'the party tuk tuk') and were cheered up with the prospect of hurling abuse at those who were lagging behind on the bike ride. The riding was very pleasant and we soon arrived at our next stop, the beautiful lake side Eco Village of Traov Kot. The next day we headed off for the last leg of our trek and explored the Beng Mealea temple.

Back in Siem Reap, we did a walking tour of the town and a Khmer cooking class (parents will be pleased to learn the students now have a certificate proving the fact that they did a three hour course and can now take over preparing the family meals). Finally we came to what was perhaps one of the best days of the trip. We were woken up at a quarter to four in the morning to go and watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat temple. The day was then spent exploring various temples in the area and mountain biking between them. We finished off our trip with a day at the Kulen Mountain and a visit to the Phare circus, as well as finding a lovely hotel pool for a last mellow afternoon.

Lucinda Wells, Grace Gunner and Hillary Johnson

Art @ Northcote Pool