Kratie and Ratanakiri - Swimming in craters
Trip Start
Oct 07, 2007
1
33
42
Trip End
??? ??, 2008
Ratanakiri,
Cambodia
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Next day we took another bus further north to Kratie, which took 7 long, dusty hours. Cambodia isn't by any means an ugly country but the scenery is not that varied either - I think it's best described as Holland with palm trees and without the tulips or windmills
Another waterfall
. We were pretty weary when arriving in Kratie and I may even have been just a little bit on the cranky side! Anyway, I decided that we were not interested in going to see the endangered dolphins and we take a stroll around the dusty village market and watch the sunset on the riverfront. A little kid decides to wreck the romantic moment by joining us and inviting us to come meet his class at school. We can't think of any good reason to refuse so go along with him. The teacher doesn't seem particullarly surprised to see us and we're quickly dispatched to separate classrooms to share our knowledge of the glorious English language.My class is full of teenagers and there's plenty of sniggering and private conversations when I first arrive. It's all a bit nerve-wracking but things settle down pretty quickly and they're soon firing questions at me. Most are straightforward enough but I'm a little stumped when someone asks me the cultural differences between Thailand and Cambodia. I mean how much culture d'you see in a week on Ko San road in Bankok? One kid wants to know if my boyfriend is special to me and why I'm not married which is also a bit tricky to answer! I'm a bit relieved when the class finally finishes and I can make my escape.
The next day we catch yet another bus, this time to Ban Lung, the capital of Ratanakiri
next, squeeze in 6 passengers
. We spend nearly 2 hours wating for the bus in the travel agency which doubles as a family living room. The kids are delighted to have some new playmates and are easily amused. One little girls rolls around on the floor in front of us getting absolutely filthy but looking utterly delighted with herself. Another kid spits on the wall and himself and his friend watch riveted as it drips slowly downwards. Eventually we get a bit tired of pushing a truck over and back across the room so we're quite happy when the bus finally shows up.In typical fashion it's packed to the rafters. Six people share the two seats opposite us - two adults and four kids and there are people sitting on little plastic stools in the aisle. Thankfully , it's a reserved seating system and we get a seat each even though it's a bit of a struggle to get to them and we have to throw two imposters out! The number of people they manage to squeeze into vehicles here is quite incredible. Every inch of space including the roof is utilized. We've even seen vans where they've managed to fit an extra kid on the window side of the driver!
Anyway, as you've probably figured it was a bit of a trek to get to Ratanakiri so the real question is - was it worth it? Well sort of - it's a pretty cool place and travelling by motorbike on the dusty, red dirt tracks between waterfalls it really feels like you're at the end of nowhere. The trouble is it needed something really unique to justify three days of travelling to get there and it just didn't have that. I expected the lake in a volcanic crate might be something special (my image was of a kind of Mt Vesuvious with a swimming pool on top!) but it turned out to be an ordinary, if extremely beautiful, lake surrounded by trees. Still at least now we know!
