eat river view. We spent the next couple of days just enjoying the riverfront... running in the mornings, walking around town and checking out the French Colonial architecture in the afternoons then going out to watch the sunset in the evenings. Then we took a 4-day side trip to visit the Elephant Valley Project in the Mondulkiri Province (see next blog entry), and returned to spend several more lazy days just chilling out. On one of our more ambitious days, we rented a motorbike and rode to the neighboring town of Chlong (45 minutes away) along the bumpiest, dustiest road. By the time we got there, every pore was absolutely covered in red dust. Found a nice little eatery and chowed down on cold noodle salads and fresh spring rolls then ate some more dust on the ride back. On our return, we rode for another 30 minutes in the other direction hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare 
Irrawaddy Dolphins. We took a boat ride, and it wasn't long before we started to see them, but only for brief moments when they came up for air. And though we didn't get to see them up close, we felt lucky to have seen them before they became extinct.
Another happy thing about Kratie was discovering the bar/cafe/bookshop, Red Sun Falling. Joe, the owner, is an American ex-pat who has been living in Cambodia for eight years. He was great fun to talk to, and the food and 
drinks were very reasonably priced. So before we knew it, we found ourselves going there every night. We didn't even realize we were craving Western food until we started seeing his daily specials. We tore into his Flemish stews and veggie pies, and drank quite a bit of his beer and vodka too!
But then we ran out of dental floss. We literally went to every shop, market, pharmacy and even to a dental clinic, but most people had never even heard of it before! Oy, time to move on...
Erik: Kratie was relaxing and fun – and we did manage to get into a daily routine of exercise in the (relatively) cool mornings, then breakfast and a bit of exploring in the morning/early afternoon. Lunch, siesta, then beer while watching the sunset over the mekong, followed by dinner at Joe's place. After a while, the sunsets grew boring, so we just went straight to Joe's for a pastis or beer and his nightly dinner special. We were in Kratie over valentine's day, and joe had the place decked out in hundreds of big paper hearts, each with its own ribald, cynical valentine's day statement. “I liked you mo
re before you started talking”, “I love you long time (or until your NGO funding runs out)”, etc. It was a fun place, and most of the ex-pats living in Kratie went there in the evenings, so we were able to get the local scoop on things. We even were invited to a birthday party for a lovely Australian woman working with the Irrawaddy fresh-water dolphins. We'd have liked to stay for the party, but our Cambodian visa was running out, so we needed to head on to Laos quite soon.
Oh, the part about the dental floss is true – we scoured the entire town, including every single stall of the market, but none was to be found. Also worrying was that we'd not seen any sunscreen, either. Finally, on our last day there, we did find some very cheap sunscreen - $3 for a big bottle of SPF 50. “Too good to be true” as they say...and it was indeed. I was to pay a higher price a few days later...
Our photos from Kratie:
 |
| Kratie, Cambodia |
No comments:
Post a Comment