It has been one of those days - lots of bad news, though none of it affecting us directly. This morning we set off to Chay Voloman School, leaving home at 6.45 so as to avoid the rush hour. Shortly after we crossed the Mekong river we hit a traffic jam. Crowds of people were thronging around and the few police present seemed unable to clear a way through. We couldn't tell what was the cause of the disruption, but on the way home late in the afternoon we found out - a building had collapsed near the road killing more than twenty people who were asleep inside. Just one more small tragedy we thought. Back home I checked the news on the Net and read that a fire in the squatter area down town had burnt two thousand homes to the ground. So that's what the smoke was yesterday as we drove back to the factory in the afternoon. Now the squatters are homeless. Just to cap things off I read that the King of Nepal declared a state of emergency today and called in the army to tackle the Maoist rebels. Our thoughts are with all our Nepalese friends over there caught in the middle...