Wednesday 8 Sept 2010 

Well, I’m back in Phnom Penh, and I’ve just done my first three classes of paid teaching at a new university. Hopefully some paid work will keep body, soul and bank account together and support the volunteering. I’ve noticed a few more odd things here. On a couple of street corners the residents have taken to piling their rubbish in the middle the side road just on the brink of a T intersection. In other words, if you are driving down the main road you don’t run over the pile of junk, but if you are turning into or out of the smaller side road, you have to drive around this big pile of garbage. I don’t know if they got sick of the amount of junk in their street, or if they are protesting at the city council rubbish collection not collecting from their street or what. (There actually is some kind of municipal rubbish collection here, but small amounts of general litter just stay where they are unless some recyclable collector finds them worthwhile collecting. The recycle collector guys mostly seem to go for plastic bottles, since everyone here drinks bottled water. Other trash just stays where it’s dumped.

I’ll try to follow the same route home from university each night, and see what happens to the trash mountain.