From Kratie in Cambodia to Don Det island in Laos

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Our journey from Sihanouk ville to Kratie in the north of Cambodia was one of the worst since we started travelling. Getting bus at 7 am, arriving to Phnom Penh after mid-day was the easy part. We were told to wait for another bus at the bus station but then we were loaded onto a tuk-tuk and driven somewhere else to find out we were getting a mini-van to Kratie. It wouldn't be tragic if the weather in Phnom Penh wasn't sooo hot and sooo humid and we were sitting in the mini-van, squashed liked sardines and had to wait for maybe another 2 hours until they completely loaded the car with boxed, bags with rice, motorbikes and then it took another good few hours to get to our final destination. So when we arrived to Kratie at 8 pm, we were exhausted and it was already dark but it was still roasting outside and you just can't stop sweating in this weather. The positive thing was that there were two Buddhist monks travelling with us which made me happy as I really like them. They are always smiley and looking peaceful in their orange robes. What confuses me though, is that I always thought that Buddhist monks are only allowed to own one robe and one begging bowl and all the monks here seem to have mobil phones and mp3 players and I even saw one monk smoking!

Arriving to Kratie, Davy's only thought was to get a beer as it was the 17th of March, St. Paddy's day. It turned out that Kratie is a shithole and possibly the only place on Earth where St. Patrick's day is not celebrated. Not only that, it also turned out that it is a place without a bar or a draught beer and as Davy still gets sick from bottles or cans of the local beer with its glycerin preservatives, he had to try the glycerin-removal experiment to be able to drink at least one beer 😊 And it worked! 😊

Other than that, there is pretty much nothing exciting about Kratie, its a tiny town with surprisingly wide streets, it has a proper colonial boulevard feeling although there are really no people or cars using them. We rented bikes and in the biggest heat cycled to 15 km distant village Kampi which is supposed to be one of the best spots to spot river dolphins. It was amazing to be cycling in the countryside and through tiny villages and as Cambodians have lots of children, there was a few children in front of every house waving and shouting "Hello Hello" at us, super excited to see tourists. We got a boat in Kampi for an hour and indeed, we saw the dolphins straight away. They have to come to the surface for a breath every few minutes so you can see them all around you and you can actually hear them breathing. It was amazing although very sad considering there is apparently about 80 of them left in the whole Mekong river and they are close to extinction.

Continuing on the sad note, I just finished reading a book called "First they killed my father" about the Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge period and it is so heartbreaking to realize how bad it was here for the Cambodian people and really hard to understand how something so cruel could happen. Despite that or maybe because of that the Cambodian people seem to be very happy. They live in their poor and humble houses, owning maybe a few chickens and still you can see a smile on their faces all the time and you can actually feel that their happiness. As Dalai Lama says "We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering" and they seem to be doing quite well at it.

Our original plan was to continue to Banlung, which is in north-east part of Cambodia but we decided to rather move to Laos to have at least 2 weeks in Laos. Yes, it was obvious from the whole beginning of our travels that 2 weeks for Cambodia and 2 weeks for Laos couldn't be enough time to see everything and so we are hoping Banlung (which is supposed to be absolutely amazing place) won't become too turisty before we come here again. So we got a bus (actually a mini-van, a bus, another mini-van and a boat) and crossed the Cambodia-Laos border and arrived to Don Det island which in one of the 4000 islands in the south of Laos. We heard very contradictory things about this place while some people said it was their favourite place in Laos and others being completely disgusted. It wouldn't be my type of place either, or least that is what i thought when we arrived. Lots of young people obviously coming here for partying. People floating on the big tubbings on the Mekong river with a beer in one hand and a joing in another. But I promised to Davy to give this place a chance so I did and we had a great time. We rented bikes the following day and cycled all around the Don Det and neighbor Don Khon islands. Don Khon is more authentical, so you can actually see local people living their lives, fishing, children running from school or buffalos lazily swimming in the river. There is a few waterfalls on the island so we cycled to one of the them and went for a dip and simply had a lovely day enjoying being in Laos. Then we went kayaing the following day which was even better, it was organized tour around and on the islands and we did a good bit of paddling watching the lovely landscape of the 4000 islands from the kayak. Paddled to a Cambodia and saw again the river dolphins and then returned to Laos and went to see the biggest waterfalls in south-east Asia, the Khone Phapeng waterfalls. Apparently they are not the highest but largest by volume and considering it is a dry season now, they were still pretty impressive.

I tried the Lao national dish, the famous laap. As they didn't have a fish in several restaurant (which is suspicious considering that Don Det lies on the big Mekong river) and there is no veg option, I went for chicken (only for the cultural experience though). I was pretty excited about the dish with my first bite, it was a burst of flavors in my mouth, lemongrass and chillies and with every other bite it got worse, the chicken was probably old and very chewy and the burst turned into overpowering mixture of salt and chillies and it was too much of everything.

In our effort to see as much as possible in a really short time, we are getting bus up north to Savannakhet and we will try and make it to Luang Prabang and either north or east after that. Sending lots of greetings from hot Laos xx

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