Blogs from East, Cambodia, Asia - page 24

Stung Treng is the gateway to Rattanakiri, home of some of Cambodia's best wildlife spotting, but the heat had convinced me that tramping around wouldn't be much fun, so we headed for Kratie the next day. The touts were out in force, and were persistent beyond the point of mere irritation. I'll mention here about the bizarre dual currency system in Cambodia. You can pay for anything in either $ or riel (with a 4,000 to 1 exchange rate being almost universally employed), but in general you'll use $ for anything "large" and receive change in riel (especially when the change is less than 4,000 riel). The ATMs give out $. The main reason for anyone to stop in Kratie is for the dolphins that live in the river there, however after arriving we decided that ... read more

I apologise to you all for being so tardy in updating this journal; it has simply been too expensive to use the internet over the last two weeks. As such, I have a backlog of quasi-interesting stories for you to read (a good excuse to bludge at work, right?), and due to Pedro’s comments I shall try to keep them in chronological order where possible. Kratie Soon after Jeff’s departure from the holiday, Alex and I headed into northern Cambodia to the town of Kratie. I was under the impression that we would still be well within the Cambodian tourist loop as Kratie is one of the few places where it is still possible to see the Irawaddy dolphins; a unique species which only lives in the lower stretches of the Mekong. Much to our surprise ... read more

Fuel Efficiency - Cambodia Style We arrived in Banlung after a 6 hour journey through some non-paved roads from Kratie. We took a 'shared taxi' to get there. When we booked it, we were told there would be 4 in the front and 4 in the back and so we weren't sure what type of vehicle it would be - perhaps a mini-bus, we thought. We were wrong. A toyota corolla turned up and we jumped in. We were the only passengers and thought to ourselves 'nice one' - we've got loads of space and Chris managed to bag the front seat to himself. Anyway, 30 minutes later, there were 4 people in the front, 4 adults in the back, two children and three birds. There were two people in the driving seat - one driver, ... read more

Since arriving in Cambodia 3 days ago, I've had the feeling that this is a bit more like it...particularly now I'm in an absolutely amazing place called Kratie. We flew into Phnom Penh on Thursday 25th Jan and went to our accommodation in the middle of the city. The city itself is pretty big, pretty dirty and pretty smelly. But its got character and life, and an amazing amount of energy. It also has the craziest traffic system I've seen on my travels to date. Its a bit like the film Speed, where the bus can't go under a certain speed limit, otherwise it blows up. Except here, there are several thousand mopeds and cars who have to maintain their speed at all costs - I have no idea how we didn't see any crashes - ... read more

After getting the bus back to Phnom Penh we booked into the same guesthouse (Eventually -Seems there are a few of them with the same name seeing as it appears in Lonely Planet). Then we do what we always do in Cambodia - We went for an Indian. After that we arranged a bus to Kratie. After changing from a minibus to a big bus and a 6 hour journey the following morning we reached Kratie. Kratie is a bit of a one horse town famous for being one of the few places on the Mekong River you can still see the rare Irawaddy dolphins. Other than that it hasn't a whole lot else going on. Once off the bus we negotiated a lovely room with a spare double bed (Princely sum of 4 Dollars) opposite ... read more