Travels after Seam Reap

After almost 3 weeks in Siem Reap it was time to leave and continue my travels. Early morning (7a) I entered a very old bus to take me to the East side of Cambodia called Kratie or Kracheh. For the next 5 hours I passed the lovely Cambodian country-side I was so used to by now with houses on stilts some of them colorful some barely finished. The cows, buffalo’s, dogs, cats, chicken and pigs which are walking freely in the ‘garden’.  You’ll see children playing in the surrounding or helping their parents on the fields. It always gives me a warm and happy feeling to see this homely country life. Usually the women are working on the fields or selling food (bread, noodle dishes, fish, vegetable) some of them have a clothes ‘stall’ or sell sugar cane juice in little bags with crushed ice (delicious). Or they are busy with the house work or go to the market on the moto and return with many bags of goods. The men usually take it easy and hang out on a street corner with their moto and try to get some ‘business’ to transport people or animals on their moto, or they drink tea in a little stall or have a nap at the cabana under their house. And the children well they are children and are busy playing or waiving at busses and shouting probably HELLO. So while the loud music and dvd is playing in the bus I’m watching the world go by and enjoy the Cambodian life while listening to my own music. Half way we arrive at our crossing point which is Kampung Cham from there a bus will take me to Kratie which is another 4 hours. We are waiting for a bus which comes from Phnom Penh and is due to arrive in 20 minutes, after 45 minutes waiting I get the feeling it could be a long wait but there’s nothing you can do. So after 2 hours the bus finally arrives, this one is even older but I’m lucky to have two seats this time to stretch and relax. So I put my music on again and stare outside the window and can see the landscape change to more remote country-side with more trees, hills and a lot of red dust. The sun sets so it gets dark and that means really dark as there aren’t many street lights. Finally at 8.30pm and 13 hrs of travel later I arrived at my hostel. Unfortunately, they only have room for 1 night but the only thing I want now is a shower followed by a meal. Well I got both in the next couple of hours but then when I wanted to go to bed there was no electricity in my room. In the end they couldn’t fix it that night so I slept in the dark and my fan worked with an extension lead to the other room.

The next day after I’ve changed to a hostel next door I went on my bike to explore Kratie which is actually a very small village on the Mekong Delta river but nothing much else. I decided to do cycling trip the next day to the island to see how the locals live.  My new travel companion the Italian version of (long hair) Brad this time set off on our ‘mountain’ bikes at 8am in the morning with some food and a map. We crossed the river by ferry and started cycling after we enjoyed our breakfast; noodle soup with beef (??) at a small stall run by a mother and her family. We were joined by many locals trying to have a chat with us or finding out what we were doing on the Island. We started cycling along the Mekong Delta viewing the local life which is very similar as the one on the mainland and were greeted by the friendly locals – mainly children – who wanted to chat or touch these ‘white people’. The Italian Brangelina were halted or invited many times to talk to the locals, we met a couple of women and their children who were making candy in a big hot pot. If I understand them correctly this was something similar as toffees. Most of the time after hello or how are you? the conversation halted as they didn’t understand our answers but a big smile does wonders. At some point we had a rest and a lady with her 2 year old granddaughter joined us while we had some pine-apple and sandwich. She kept on talking and making faces but we had no idea what she was talking about. I think she was impressed that we were cycling and she was trying to tell us that we would be sore at certain parts of our body later o!  I said at least 1000 times hello to the children who came out of their houses or from the field to see us but every time I gave them a big smile and waved as it made me so happy and I wanted to give them my full attention. We stopped many times time to talk to them or just giggled as we all were lost for words. At some point we were surrounded by at least 15 children who started copying what I was saying in English.  It all ended with a mini lesson in English. Some of them were very clever and could count till 20 and repeat the alphabet within 10 minutes. I also taught them the head, shoulders, knees and toes rhyme which they were able to sing in the end. All very endearing and I was surprised that it was so easy to get their attention and teach things. It was hard to leave as we could have continued for a long time. Italian Brad said that I I should explore these skills as it was obvious we both loved (the children and me) it.

We continued cycling but soon we stopped again to have a drink at a stall which was run by 2 lovely teenage girls, we started chatting and soon more kids arrived to see what was happening. We continued our trip and tried to find a crossing with a boat to take us back to the mainland. When we arrived there the boat wasn’t due to leave for at least half an hour so we waited on the boat. While we waited some more people arrived; a guy on a bike with a chicken (still alive) hanging from the bikes handle bars,  another on a bike with a small net with a couple of chicks on his handle bars. Finally someone arrived on a scooter which was totally overloaded and he was struggling to keep his scooter in control.  He had to board the boat but I wasn’t sure how he was going to do that. A couple of men helped him to push his scooter up the ramp, after a couple of attempts he got on the ramp but fell to the left and everything came off his scooter including him!

So all had to be dragged onto the boat – which then left – and to my surprise he started rebuilding his scooter and all the ‘junk’ that had to get on the back of it. He managed and got off the boat without any falls or losing his baggage.

Sugar cane juice in a bag

Mekong Delta view

Our ferry to the other side