Kratie

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Joff - Having spent a marvelous day at Angkor Wat the previous day we woke early for the 7.15am bus to Kratie. Having been advised by the lady in our hostel that she could not tell us what type of transport would take us there we waited for our pickup with some trepidation.

After some wait a bus arrived which took us to the central bus station. We were very quick to note on boarding our bus that we were the only white people on the bus save one other and as is customary there can be up to 5 people sitting on any 2 seats. Fortunately we had booked and so our seats were free. The bus was cool and clean to begin with but behind us we had a serial smoker who was clearly dying (hopefully not from TB) hacking up and spitting in a bag and the clearing his nose into the aisle. This started to grate me slightly as I could feel his cough on the back of my head. Sometimes it can be a bit of a curse being taller than the average local! I can normally stick my legs in the aisle but due to the snotting and the fact that the aisle was full of occupied plastic chairs the space was pretty cramped....or so I thought....

We stopped at Kompong Cham and some ladies came onto the bus with an array of offerings ranging from fruit to eggs to complete small birds which had been fried including the feathers. Needless to say we were not hungry. We continued for another hour or so when we stopped and were rather unceremoniously dumped from the bus. We crossed the road with the usual stragglers trying to touch Caroline's white skin which was not that welcome after six hours confined on the bus. As various vehicles passed us with people clinging to the top we joked that that could be us shortly. Our fate was in fact somewhat worse. We were to get a minibus. Mini meaning small and bus allegedly being a bus but looked more like a people carrier just with more seats. Including luggage I would say that there was sufficient to fill at least 4-5 of these "buses" that said this is not Reading so true to form we were physically pushed and shoved into the van whilst people climbed through the windows. I say we, but due to my size I managed to bag the front seat and I only had to share this with another western guy and some luggage. Caroline was pushed into the back with a pile of people which at last count totaled around 25. All this into the space of a people carrier and at that one without aircon.
The journey was bumpy and incredibly dusty and not least confined. Finally we started to arrived at villages where we seemed to drop off all the occupants (and a full pigs head which some woman had in a basket) at their homes. The journey continued and it was at this point I became glad that I had booked the most expensive place in town at $16 a night including breakfast. Caroline was not looking best pleased, but we joked that we may have just broken a world record!!

We arrived in Kratie just as dusk was falling. The hotel was beautiful with views over the Mekong but the town itself aside from the front is a complete shit hole! We ate dinner had a few beers and had an early night.
We woke late this morning and ate breakfast and spent the rest of the day preparing for the onward leg of the journey. We head to the 4000 islands in Laos tomorrow. In the late afternoon we went to see the irawaddy dolphions feed in the Mekong which was a great expericence in spite of thje most boring Isralei guy tagging along as he didn't want to pay for a tuk tuk! You can take the jew out of Israel but you can't take the jew out of the jew! Sorry to any of our Jewish friends! We saw numerous dolphins and then went to a temple at the top or a hill on our way back. something which we had not intended to do after Angkor Wat yesterday but the Isralei insisted having paid significantly less than ourselves!
Can't wait for Laos now, all we have to do is navigate the border!!

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