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Published: April 21st 2010
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Ban Lung
Village house on our way to the waterfalls Thailand is the land of beautiful beaches...
Laos is all about easy living, relaxing and taken it easy...
Cambodia seems to be big on smiles with something to do everyday!!!
We quickly sorted everything out at the border town of Stung Treng and putting the unfortunate robbing behind us, we set out east to the hills and remote town of Ban Lung. A 14 passenger mini van packed with 20people we set off for the 4 hour journey through the dusty, red dirt road!!
What a trip.
Most people making the journey here use it as a gateway to explore the hills and do some trekking however we decided to explore the surrounding area by push bike!! It was brilliant over the following 2 days we packed our baskets with a pic-nic and happy to report that the saying "like riding a bycicle, you never forget" is true. The first day was spent relaxing, swimming and exploring a volcano crater lake! Spectacular to see so many local families having pic nics and jumping in with us!! The 2nd day we peddaled our hearts out to explore nearby waterfalls. The journey there was something special, bicyling through villages on the
Kratie
Sunset on the longtail boats, as the Irrawadi Dolphins swim around us. way, kids were running out to the edge of the road with a smile, yelling HELLO!! With a Big wave and running away laughing when we replied in turn. They seemed so excited to see a foreigner and show us their english! We saw 2 waterfalls that day and they proved to be nice and refreshing at the end of a hot and long dusty road. We head to Kratie next, and with an early start we arrive before noon. Having stopped here to view the rare and endangered Irrawadi river Dolphins, we soon reallized it was possible to do that afternoon. We organized our transport, jumped on the back of motorcycles (no peddling for us!) and headed for the river. We had an hour on a longtail boat and almost immediately we found a pod of around 10 Dolphins! Whatching the sunset surrounded by rare dolphins was pretty spectacular.
Most people come to Cambodia with one common destination, Angkor Wat. Heading west from Kratie we jumped off the bus a few hours before Siem Reap in a town called Champon Thom to get a historical preview to Angkor Wat. Visiting Sambot Prei Kuk Ruins, we took a
the four faces of Bayon
Cycling around the ruins in Angkor Wat guide through and learnt a lot about the history and craftmanship of the pre-Angkorian ruins, built between the 7th and 8th cantury this served as Cambodia's 2nd capital before it moved to Angkor Wat in the early 9th century.
Making our way to Siem Reap, the base city to explore Angkor Wat (meaning Capital City or Holy City) we spent the next 6days here, 3 of which were at the site. Our stop to Sambot Prei Kuk ruins proved to be most helpful in recognizing the difference in the pre angkorian Hindu influenced architecture, to the new bhuddist style of the 9th to 13th centurie ruins. Angkor Wat covers a huge ground and after spending day one exploring and getting our bearings on the city by tuk tuk we soon reallized it was best explored at our own pace with bicycles!!! Our second day we managed to make it in time for sunrise leaving our hostel at 4:30am!!! Sounds early but deffinately necessary in the extreme heat, and most deffinately rewarding to watch the day unfold in such a spectacular setting. It's hard to put into words the devotion and hard work that was put into 4centuries of
Angkor Wat
Waking up at 4:30am is deffinately worth such a majestic view of the Kingdom!! a masterpiece. Each temple built for worship in name of the king incharge at the time, some so grand that the king never got to appreciate as it took more than a lifetime to build. Hard to imagine the lifestyle so long ago as we make our way through another human wonder!!
We start making the journey towards the capital city of Pnom Phen but not without stopping in Battambang first. The attraction here is a very unique form of transportation.....the bamboo train!! Over the years failure to maintain cambodia's railway system locals took matters in their own hands to be albe to transport goods to the markets and travel between villages...They built bamboo trains. This consists of slats made of ultra-light bamboo, that rests on two barbell-like bogies connected by a fan belt to the engine. Traditionnaly piling 10-15 people or up to three tones of rice, they cruise along at about 15km/h!!! Four of us jump on the bamboo cart and start our journey half and hour to the neighbouring village!!! In the distance we can see on this single lane track a cart approching us....head on collision!!! The general rule of thumb as we come
Battambang
The local Bamboo train.... to a halt facing each other is that the cart carrying the heaviest load wins and in our case we are facing a family of locals and goods heading to the market, under
our conductors moans and groans our cart is lifted of the track like a puzzle, pushing the other train through and reassambling ours back on the track we continue on our way. What a creative way around the public transportation system!!! Considering we only travelled 7km to the neighbouring village in a half hours time we opted to take the bus for the 300km journey to Pnom Phen, although the thought entered our minds we simply didn't have 8 days to travel the tracks!!!
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