No tittering at the back

Sometimes it pays to talk to strangers: there was I, three nights ago, wandering round the riverfront in Battambang and wondering how I would use the next few days. Bloke pulls up on a bike and asks me to explain what a microchip is (it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that he was talking about computers and nothing McCain-related). Following my inept attempt to do so, he asks whether I have a few hours spare. And so very quickly I find myself in front of a classroom of giggling 18-year-olds, trying and failing to define the difference between 'although' and 'even though' and staving off hecklers asking me to bed them (well ok, there was one heckler, and yes, of course it was a guy). Turns out the bloke who asked me along is unemployed but borrows the local primary after school to help teenagers from the area with their English and presumably roams the streets looking for bewildered-looking native speakers to lend a hand. In my heart of hearts I really can't think I was that much use to them (if anything it highlighted my alarming ignorance of grammar), but we all got along famously and it did feel slightly more worthwhile than my usual evening's occupation of seeing how lashed I can get without falling off a motorbike. I even went back for more punishment yesterday and today - you should be able to see photos of me holding court on Ringo.
Tomorrow I'm heading back to Bangkok, and Tuesday is the end of the Asian affair; or at least of this instalment. It's been indescribable.