And so we move on to Cambodia

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Reluctantly, as our visa's were about to expire, we booked ourselves out of Don Det and Laos and onwards to Cambodia. We booked a bus to Siem Reap, where the Temples of Angkor are. This is a long was from the Laos border, so there was a stop overnight scheduled, which turned out to be in a place called Kratie.

But first we had to cross the boarder, which was pretty funny. On the Laos side was a very small thatched wooden shack, with "customs" hand painted on in red paint. Behind the ''desk'' was a man desperately trying to look official. After leaving Laos, we alked a few metres down the dusty road with a group of goats to reach Cambodian immigration, which wasn't much better. We dutifully paid up and got our shiny new Cambodia visas. (Side note: who owns the bits of land between the emmigration of one country and the immigration of another? Were the goats Cambodian or Laoation goats? Maybe they are free goats and not restrained by one nationality)

And so! Onwards to Kratie. Kratie is famed for it's proximity to the habitat of the rare Irawady Dolphin. Seen as we found ourselved there with an afternoon to kill, we decided to take up the kind offer of some random blokes to take us there on their mopeds. It was instantly striking to us how different Cambodia was from it's neighbour Laos. For a start, there was heaps of bags of rubbish all over the streets. And the women wear pyjamas sets, it looks pretty comfy actually. On the drive to the dolphin part of the river we saw heaps of men wearing just the traditional Khmer checked scarf around thair waists, althought it was the middle of nowhere and is not indicitive of how most Cambodian men dress! Also, we saw buffalo ploughing fields and pulling carts along the road. It was like stepping back in time, except for the constant flow of mopeds!

At the river we took a longtail boat out across the vey wide stretch of the Mekong, and lo and behold we did indeed se the dolphins! They weren't exactly doing flipper-esque tricks but they were definately there. So we saw an endangered species in the wild. They were too quick for my camera though.

We were only there one night, as we caught the 13 hour bus journey to Siem Reap the next day!

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[Mum & Dad]

What is Andy Roddick doing with you in Cambodia?