When last we left off I think I was in Phnom Penh. I left the next day, by bus going north to Kratie. We had decent roads and my seat had marginally above average leg room for Cambodia. Of course we had interminable Cambodian karoke at too high a volume (just comfortable with earplugs in) which is de rigeur here, a swarm of mosquitos in the bus (I killed 3 and that left another 5 or 6 circling overhead, luckily my repellent held them off in favour of easier victims!) and and the bus broke down once along the way, but only for about 45 minutes before they cranked it back into life. In all, as such things go in Cambodia, a pretty easy experience.

Excitingly, at one pitstop, there was a street-vendor selling deep-fried tarantulas! (see photo) I hid behind my vegetarianism and declined to try.

I arrived in Kratie at around 3 and made my way to my chosen hotel which was really very nice and at $10, actually $5 cheaper than I expected. On the way in I was accosted by Darrie, a female moto driver (the first I’d seen) who got my business purely on the basis of positive descrimination (women are pretty equal out here, but jobs tend to be strongly divided on gender lines, so it’s nice to see some mixing going on). She whizzed me out to the dolphin viewing area, about 15k north of town, my first ride on a bike since I’ve tended to prefer tuk-tuks as safer. Not to bad really, though I sure did get a faceful of bugs coming back at dusk, and I didn’t always feel that safe what with no helmet and all! The dolphin viewing was nice, though the dolphins were quite shy, so we only caught brief glimpses and I didn’t manage to get any decent photos. Still, we had a nice puddle round on the Mekong with the sun going down which was pleasant. On the way back to shore the motor failed (surprise!) and we eventually had to be rescued by another boat.

Happily, on the boat I made contact with a nice couple called Pete and Manisha who were also looking to go to Ratanakiri. I suggested that a share taxi would be much more comfortable than trying to bus and they agreed to share with me. That night we organised to buy the back seat (more on this arcane system later) on a 4wd to Ban Lung - provincial capital of Ratanakiri. The next morning arrived and our nice Pajero arrived with an American chap called Fred who’d bought out the front passenger seat, and a cambodian driver who seemed quite nice but spoke almost no English. The trip to Ban Lung was bumpy but uneventful, and it gave the three of us in the back a chance to chat, and we got on quite well, and so made friends. On arrival, we inevitably got taken to the driver’s company’s hotel, which we refused, and eventually stayed at a place called the Tribal Hotel, which looked the most promising based on the guide. I was less than overwhelmed at first as I liked my room at Kratie so well, but the place grew on me, and I’ve since learned that hoping for truly mosquito-proof rooms out in the wops is like wishing for rain in the dry season.

The three of us met for dinner and chatted away. Pete is English and Manisha is from Hong Kong. They are a couple of months into an *18 month* trip round SE Asia, after which they plan to emmigrate to Australia.

Ban Lung is the most amazing end-of-the-world dustbowl. There is only limited electricity, almost everything is shut after 8pm, and all the roads are just bare dirt - incredibly dusty in the dry season. It feels like there should be tumbleweed blowing in the wind. The next day was Christmas day, and I went to bed feeling a bit depressed about having trekked four hours out in a 4wd just to spend xmas in such a dump.

Christmas day turned out pretty well however. We rented bikes and cycled out to Yeak Lom, a local lake which is pretty much perfectly circular, leading many (including me) to speculate that it was probably formed by meteor strike. It was very beautiful and we had a very pleasant day swimming and walking. That evening we’d had a tip on a hotel out of town doing a posh dinner so we walked out, and got lucky as they were putting on a local minority song and dance show which they let us watch for free. Dinner was nothing particularly christmassy, but they did at least have a tree, so we spent up large and had a pleasant enough meal for about $20 each - a small fortune in this part of the world.
The only international phone call place we ever managed to find was the Post Office, which only sold cards of max $3 USD meaning enough for 3 minutes. On xmas morning I rang my father and spoke to his answer phone for one minute and to him for two. The timing was wrong to ring uk, though I did try you the next day, but something weird happened, I think maybe you picked up but we couldn’t hear each other.

On boxing day, Pete was feeling a bit under the weather having gamely decided to swim the full width of Yeak Lom (maybe a km) the day before, followed by consuming the lion’s share of the two bottles of wine for dinner. He and Manisha stayed in while I cycled over to Ka Chianh, a local waterfall surrounded by jungle which was totally wicked. I swam at the bottom and even climbed up under it and behind it!

The next day, Pete and Manisha stayed in and I decided to push on towards Laos. I caught a shared taxi to Stung Treng. So now is a good time to explain how shared taxis work in Cambodia. Imagine your average largish family car. The standard is a Toyota Camry. In this case, so old and beaten up that my door didn’t close properly, there were no windscreen wipers, the wing mirror was broken and the rev and speed counters never left zero the entire journey. Right, now imagine four people in the back, and four people in the front. Yep, that’s right, two in the front passenger seat and two in the driver’s seat!!! unreal. Luckily I was wise to this and paid for two seats - effectively buying up the *entire* front passenger seat all to myself. Unimaginable luxury! Actually, despite the apparent ricketyness of the car, and the odd time when I held my breath wondering if we were actually going to tip the car over, the trip back was if anything more comfortable than the trip up in the 4wd.

We arrived in Stung Treng at around 11:30am which was good going, and I took a deep breath and set about trying to figure out how to get across into Laos. I read quite a bit on this in various guides but still couldn’t entirely figure out how it all worked. As it turned out, it wasn’t too difficult. I managed to get on a speed-boat leaving Stung Treng for the border. This was a white-knuckle experience that was actually a lot of fun and very scenic, though distinctly scary and incredibly cramped (my knees were actually right up under my chin, and after 45 minutes when I finally couldn’t take the pain anymore and gingerly tried to move my foot onto the running board without falling out of the boat, it was so dead I actually had to lift my leg out with my hand).

The boat dropped us at the border station which was a laugh because it was so yolky-parky you couldn’t believe it. Almost no signs, just a random little village and a guy in his singlet who wasn’t sure which was were going and hit us up for the prescribed $1 bribe so ineffectually (he gave me back my passport all stamped and sealed and THEN asked for his bribe) that when I just said no, he didn’t know what to do! We nearly accidentally re-entered Cambodia after that, because it was so unobvious which way to go. By the way, *we* at this point was me and a Swedish guy called Nicholas I ran into on the boat.

On reaching the Laos border, it was more difficult to escape the $1 “stamp fee”, though I did get a signed receipt for it, so maybe it was on the level, who knows?! Anyhow, from there we caught motos to Nagasan easily enough, and a boat from there to Don Det - one of the many many small islands in this part of the Mekong. Don Det was a bit of a mistake I now realise. It’s very pretty, and it has better than average facilities for these parts, but it is a real tourist ghetto, so it feels more like Phuket than I would have liked. I was trying to escape this morning, but was dummied out by a dud scale on the Lonely planet guide. I thought I had time for a short stroll to see the waterfalls and eat my breakfast before checking out. In the event, instead of the 20 minute stroll indicated by the map, it was more like an hour’s hike in each direction, so by the time I got back I was dripping with sweat and it was really to late to check-out. Never mind, I had a very nice snooze, and came to find the internet place, and here we are.