On our second day in Cambodia we taught the children for three lessons and some of us visited the community in which these poor children live. Afterwards we were informed that we would be taking part in a challenge to locate some items and carry out a series of task that would test our ability to work together as a team. Myself, Alex Lowe and Henri Gernaey quickly set out on foot to find each of the items and complete the challenge.

We started well and quickly found the first item on the list, a post card, as they were sold almost everywhere. Once we’d got the postcard we realised that it had to have a stamp on it, so we set out to find the local post office, local being the operative word. We were given all different directions to the post office by the locals until eventually we chose a direction and luckily found it quickly. Also, on the way to the post office we were able to purchase a Cambodian object which was a model of the golden palace made from shiny gold paper.

We then needed to set out in search of a Cambodian delicacy that we had to eat in order to complete the challenge…spiders. Luckily for us they were nowhere to be found…for now. We then decided to head towards the temple where we hoped to find a monk that we could take a picture with and fortunately we found a friendly monk. After an hour searching for fridge magnets, and having learnt how to say fridge magnet from a kind shop owner, we eventually found them in a small store next to the temple.

Now the final challenge lay ahead of us…to eat a spider. We asked a group of tuk tuk drivers to take us to the place where we could buy spiders to eat and we then took a 10 minute drive to the central market where, down a small alleyway, we found the spiders. It was then up to our teammate Henri to take up the challenge and devour the arachnids! After about ten minutes of dreading, retching and chewing, the spider was gone and our challenges were completed and we headed to the golden palace.

We are now awaiting the morning when the winner will be announced!