February saw another successful "pick up" house-building trip with Jude Quarry at the helm (due to work commitments, Doug couldn't make this trip) and the ever reliable Kev from WA providing a lot of technical know how on this, his fifth house-building outing.

The team was 27 strong with the make up from all around Australia (actually, the Commonwealth: NSW: 13 people; WA: 8 people; VIC: 4 people; QLD: 1 person; and the UK: 1 person.

We literally broke fresh ground on this trip, as this was the first house-building trip organized by Tabitha within the Svay Rieng province, located in the SE corner of Cambodia on the Vietnam border.

The journey, by four mini vans, to the city of Svay Rieng took about 3.5 hours over a road with various levels of reconstruction. There was a lot of road work happening along National Highway 1 - the main transport artery between Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City. The highlight of this trip must be the ferry crossing of the Mekong River and the lunch at Neak Luong. Actually, the crossing on the way back was much more interesting due to the enormous number of people, cars, motos and bicycles making their way to Phnom Penh for Chinese New Year, which fell on the following day.

Svay Rieng is still considered one of Cambodia's poorest provinces due to its poor soil quality and it was very obvious to all of us, from the reactions of the locals, how much appreciated and welcome our presence was.

The commute to the first village from Svay Rieng took about 90min and covered about 40km; yes, the road was very bumpy and one would have covered the distance faster on a bicycle. The slow trip allowed everyone to enjoy the countryside - the small villages we passed along the way, the many school children in the playgrounds and the occasional green rice patch when we got close to a lake or small body of water.

The team built 20 houses in total over the two days we were allocated. The materials used were thin metal sheets that required far fewer nails per metre compared to timber, however, the corners and bottom edges were sometimes more challenging.

As usual, the lunches provided by Tabitha staff were the best in the world and the water tasted just as good. February is actually the end of the cool-dry season and the temperatures, especially in the mornings, were quite cool (low 20s) with air humidity quite bearable.

Let me end this report by pointing you to the photos that are included, which speak for themselves. Click here

I would also like to say congratulations to Jude for organizing this very enjoyable and successful trip and to everyone who came along for a terrific job. Akun sohm.