As I got on the main bus from Phnom Penh to Kratie, I started chatting to Danielle ....she taught in Korea and has traveled all over the world including London and japan/china...She was about to head on to Laos and then at some point hit Myanmar. She mentioned that it can cost up to 25 dollars a night to stay there.It was 5 dollars 3 years ago but since then the government there have a rule whereby foreigners have to stay at specific hotels and the hotels have copped on to this and have started really jacking up the prices. Ouch!!
At the same time, Myanmar will change entirely within the next 10 years as it opens up to the public. I was told that 12-13 years ago, it was very hard to get into Cambodia and Laos but now it's quite easy to enter these countries. As a complete aside to this train of thought, it's a pity that most travelers skip the Philippines as it's easily as nice as the other countries (baring in mind I only BARELY saw a part of Luzon.) If they could extend the tourist visas from 21 days to something like 3 months (similar to Malaysia) they would increase tourism in a HUGE exponential manner....
Anyway, On our journey, we stopped in 2 places for some grub...This stopping and starting
on buses is very familiar at this stage in time!
So, this was why I came to Cambodia...
nice tractor but in case you don't like this one
Here is a Jinma
We arrived in kratie near 4 so it was a bit late to do anything.I ended up just walking around and waving to have the town. The town itself is a bit of a wild western town. Lots of people sitting outside shops staring at you. I had my checked shirt on and I heard one of the locals shout 'yee, haw' as I walked by him.
I have never seen so many women wear pyjamas in the middle of the day. To be honest, it doesn't really look too tacky as the weather can get quite hot and they are loose fitting clothes.
I bumped into Danny later on and discussed U.S football college with her over a beer at the 'sun setting' restaurant. The owner of the bar was an american dude who came to Cambodia originally in the year 2000. He was telling us that there were no tuktuks there at that point and there was only one (bad) main road in the whole country. He would travel everywhere by boat. It's amazing to think that there was no such things as tuktuks in places like Siem Reap as there is not much else there apart from Angkor Wat 6km down the road...So , that whole place basically exploded in the last 12 years. ( If the government continue to not do anything as regards regulation, that place WILL be dodge city within the next 5 years.)
So, in 12 years, they have created a lot of new infrastructure. Nobody really had any decent cars either.The retauranteur was a bit of an entrepreneur also as he was trying to flog the....ahem....'guys of Kratie ' - 2012 calendar. To be honest,I wasn't interested in that one too much. (sorry, Mary Claire - I should have
bought you a calendar!!!)
Anyway,I bumped into Ben also, He mentioned playing a few songs in one of the pubs.It sounded really good and i had every intention of going but then i got into a blog and forgot the time...dang (Actually, I was on my way out around 10pm but they had the gates locked. This really is the countryside. The place shuts down at a certain time and i you're not back, tough luck!!!)
The next day,I rented a motorbike off the guy that works here. The speedometer doesn't work, the
left indicator is broken and the wing mirrors aren't hectic but apart from that ,it was fine. I headed off in the direction of Wat sarsar mouy roy. I took a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately,I was in no rush to see anything so I took it easy and went to a local shop where I bought a lot of sugar based cakes ,bananas and water. It was hard to talk to the woman as I do not know any khmer words (well, I do know 'chung moi' -cheers! but that is no real help here) but the sign language was fine! She was more than happy to sell me some stuff at the local prices which was nice. To be honest, I don't mind paying the unofficial tourist prices here as the locals are strugging for anything , all the time.
Bananas are the food that keeps me going!!
I headed back in the opposite direction and at one point there was a fork in the road.
I know the Dolphins can be seen at Kampi.
Now, to find them I might need some help
Maybe they don't swim under the bridge?
I wanted to see the Iriraddy dolphins at Kampi but I also wanted to see the temple so the temple was the place to go! I headed off in that general direction and I reached the temple a half hour later (after stopping to put some petrol in the tank and avoiding some obstacles along the way.
I better stop or I will be knocked off the bike by the buffalo
Warning people off illegal fishing activities
Some local boats parked and ready for some (presumably) illegal fishing!
A volleyball court here (seems like a massive sport in this country)
They have homemade petrol tanks here . Nearly every third house has got one and they're REALLY handy!).
These 'Petrol stations' are everywhere along the road.
They're really cool though (I think I paid for a dollars worth of petrol at one point.)
I doubt if I will EVER do that back home!
I had a quick walk around the village of Sambour. Apart from the usual shouts of 'hello!', one of the local guys was trying out his English. He was pretty good as I ended up buying toothpaste off his stall.Another woman was selling cakes so i grabbed one off her. It looks like quite a few people double up their stalls as their houses (This happened a fair bit in Indonesia also.)
The temple itself was ok. I think I have been lucky enough to see so many temples and this one has a sad history as Pol Pot demolished it 30 years ago after it had stood for 350 years. They rebuilt it and here are some pics of the place.
View from the ground of the temple.
Note the statues under the roof
The temple in all its glory
The roof of the temple
Inside the temple itself
You can always find animals roaming about everywhere!
Odd looking shrine here
Who are you looking at?
Swampland behind the 100 pillar temple
I drove back to Kampi and met two guys that I had a brief conversation with on the bus yesterday. One of them mentioned that it would be cheaper if I could find someone to go on the boat with me.... As it happened, a scouse couple cycled onto the premises and a deal was cut!! This is the first time on any of my travels that I have met anyone from the Liverpool area. They have class accents!!!
As for the actual trip to see the dolphins, we weren't too lucky. The boat man drove us out for around 45 minutes and we saw plenty of dolphins but they were a good distance from the boat and they didn't spend too much time above water.
More warning signs around Kampi
These seem to be everywhere , even off the beaten track
We hired a boat like this one and the driver drover out for about 1 hour while we observed the dolphins jump around the boat (maybe a distance of 9 metres from us.) It was pretty cool but very quiet.
Nice though
This was as close as I got to catching a dolphin on camera.
They were impossible to picture as they were too quick (and my camera phone would not be the best quality either)!!
At the same time, it was nice to sit there, enjoying nature and listen to the couple talk of their experiences in China,Nepal, Vietnam and all the other countries they had visited. The dolphins were too tricky for us as we never really got a good picture :-(
I headed back to the hotel and i was cutting the petrol tight...the indicator was almost down to 'E'. The indicator was definately working but I guessed I would have been ok as there are so many homemade petrol stations dotted everywhere throughout Kratie. The police were out in force with their whistles to direct traffic (They remind me of those cr*ppy teenage discos of yore where you would always have someone with a whistle blowing constantly in your ear.aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!)
Fortunately, I was wearing a helmet and the side mirrors looked safe enough so they waved\whistled me on. I resisted the urge to high five them!
Later that evening, I decided to head to the hostel where Ben and Rhianna were staying (I have forgotten the name but I did look for the place when I arrived initially. The thing was, The woman who showed me around couldn't really speak English and I really wanted some help as regards renting a bike so I moved to a different hotel. As a side note, if you come here, the place is FULL of hotels. You can ignore the tuktuk drivers at the bus stop and just walk anywhere. there are only 3 streets here so it's tiny and people will help you out as you stand out like sore thumb here. But , as per usual, the hostel doesn't really make the plce but the people you meet in the hostel!! ) I found the guys jamming with another guy (James) outside the hostel and they were having a bit of a session. Both James and Ben are singers (both from close to Bristol) and they kept going and going until their voices \fingers started to crack! [They played outside as the rains has subsided for the evening and once it doesn't rain, there's nothing better than sitting outside in the evening time!] The owner of the hostel (who went by the name of King Mao) even joined in and a few other tourists heard the music and hung around also! (One of those guys was the guy that told me about that card scam in Phnom Penh) So, it was a pretty good night (some of the locals kept driving up and down the road as I am not sure if they were familiar with some of the songs! There was another guy who just hung around but Mao told us to keep our distance from him as he was a bit of a dealer.) Anyway, there was a footie match on later that evening and my hostel had already shut for the night so I ended up going back to the guys hostel and sleeping there for a couple of hours!!! (Thanks for not letting me sleep on the floor Mao, I would have been crippled by the mosquito bites!)
Anyway, it was time to move on..... back to Siem Reap and Poipet and into Bangkok again to sort out my Chinese visa!!!! I heard that there was a 10km race there also and I haven't ran one of those this year so I signed up for that one...
Anyway, Onwards and upwards!!
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