No money!

Trip Start Aug 15, 2006
1
130
155
Trip End May 27, 2008


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Flag of Cambodia  ,
Monday, March 3, 2008

This morning we paid Jack for the elephant ride - he'd been kind enough to suggest we pay a fraction of the normal price ($54) and consider what we could afford so we paid a sufficient amount above cost price and gave him $32 between us.  He drove us to the truck station and informed us of the typical price we should pay.  We decided to go for the cheaper seats in the open back of the truck (despite Jack's advice against it) as it would probably be less crowded (they put 7 in the cab!) and if we did have an accident we'd probably be safer in the back where we could jump out!  It was also another hot sticky day so the breeze would be nice and what better way to take in the country than riding a la local. 

The road was very bumpy and I had to hold on so tight around bumpy corners as I felt the truck was trying to throw us over the sides!  It was such a dusty road but luckily we'd bought facemasks a few days back so that was very useful.  The truck only took us as far as a place called Seoul and there we were hassled by people asking where we were going next as they wanted to offer us taxis and eventually we negotiated the price of a shared taxi as there didn't look to be any songthaws going to Kratchie, the town we needed to head to to get cash.  The taxi was only $2.50 so that worked out fine for us and we checked into U Hong guesthouse, showered then discovered that Kratchie had no ATM........the next place we'd find cash would be Laos and we didn't have enough money to get us there. We'd assumed there was an ATM in Kratchie since there's a bank so now we were stuck.  We coppered up all our cash and decided that we could either go straight to Laos with what we had and miss out on the rest of Cambodia or go to the nearest town of Kampong Cham to the ATM there. 

We explained to the owner of U Hong that we needed to leave straight away since there's no ATM and that was the only reason we came but he wasn't happy that we'd used the shower.  We explained we'd be happy to pay for the shower and since we hadn't slept in the beds then it shouldn't be a problem but he was having none of it so Ollie decided he'd go on his own to Kampong Cham, get cash out and return the following day.  He quickly packed an overnight bag and managed to get a seat on top of a minibus and off he went.

I went off in search of dinner and found that all the local places seemed to have no prices or seemed to have a separate tourist menu in English that seemed rather expensive so I went to an LP restaurant, The Red Sun Falling (I assume represents sunset over the river here) which is also a small bar and 2nd hand bookshop.  I had amazing chicken (Loc Lac) and then got chatting to an old Aussie guy sat at the bar for a while and the owner who was an extremely camp gay American guy who was excited as his bloke was due back and he hadn't seen him for a while.
I'm hoping Ollie manages to get cash tonight otherwise we may have to go back to Phnom Penh!
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