Kratie, Cambodia – January 9th – 12th, 2017

Besides taking three hours longer than scheduled and the seat in front of Andy being stuck fully reclined, the bus ride to Kratie went well (our standards for what constitutes a good bus ride have changed significantly). After eating dinner at our NGO hotel (which doubles as a training center for young Cambodians to enter the tourist industry) and taking a short walk around the smallish river town, we watched the movie “The Killing Fields”. For those who haven’t seen the movie, it’s a must watch (perhaps on a rainy day).

Thanks to an extraordinarily vocal Cambodian rooster, who apparently was severely confused about what time dawn is, we slept like shit. The only bonus to being awake most of the night, is that by the time the sun gets up, you figure you might as well too. By 10 am, we had gone for a run along the river, eaten breakfast, showered, packed our bags, and were on the ferry across the river to Koh Trong island. We rented decrepit bicycles and rode with our ever-expanding backpacks to our homestay. Our homestay had apparently decided to ignore our reservation and booked a tour group of 12 Frenchmen instead, leaving us to stay at a neighbor’s house. Although we were admittedly a bit put off at first, it turned out that we likely got a significantly better experience with the neighboring family who weren’t as used to having tourists in and out every night. For the rest of the day, we rode our bicycles around the 9 km loop twice, took a dip in the river, conversed with friendly locals, and watched the sun go down over the river. Back at our homestay, we watched Cambodian TV with the family while communicating mostly with charades and smiles. Our only verbal communication was through the outgoing young girl who was learning English at school. It was clear that so far, her English skills consist of counting, “What is your name?”, and “How old are you?”. To be fair, she is way farther along in English than we are in speaking Khmer!

Around Koh Trong.

Homestay on Koh Trong. The dog in Andy's lap literally climbed into the hammock and made himself comfortable. 

We woke up early the next morning from our rock hard “bed” (thanks again to yet another vocal rooster) and made our way back to the mainland. From Kratie, we rented a $5 motorbike and went to explore the surrounding area. Our first stop was a hilltop pagoda with meh views and very creepy murals. The paintings depicted all of the terrible things that will happen to you if you do not follow the path of Buddha. Among the more grotesque murals showed naked women receiving stick enemas by devilish-looking men, while a rabid dog ate one woman’s privates. Apparently fear tactics are used in Buddhism too. Next, we enjoyed a coconut at a river rapid overlook surrounded by countless hammocks. For some reason, after we had been there over an hour, a local came by and forcefully told us to leave. We were perplexed by this, but ended up chalking it up to the fact that we had gone to the locals side to avoid paying the $4 fee on at the identical tourist destination next door… Back on the motorbike we continued north to 100-pillar pagoda in the town of Sambok. Our last stop was along the river, where we hired a boatman to take us to see the endangered Irrawaddy dolphins. We were shocked by how many dolphins we saw, especially considering that there are less than 100 of these river dolphins left in the entire world! Lucky for us, Andy got an amazing photo within the first five minutes so we didn’t have to be preoccupied with the camera. 

Motorbike day around Krati. Right after we took the adorable picture of the dog with his toy in the bottom-right corner, he started making love to it. 

Irrawaddy dolphins.

Unfortunately, our rooster friend back at the hotel had not given up his quest for insomnia and our last night in Kratie was as sleepless as the first had been. I would not be opposed to someone murdering that rooster. Nevertheless, before we left Kratie, we people watched while enjoying good cheap food at a restaurant across from the market. As you can see in the photos, Cambodian women have elected to make PJs a style. This is one fashion statement that I fully support and plan to bring back to the western world asap (I can try anyway, and if it doesn’t catch on, at least I’ll have worn PJs all day).

Around Kratie. Our rooster friend is in the bottom-left under the cage.