Entry No. 8 by Clare

We visited The Angkor Temples, the main five. We spent most of the day climbing and walking around, they were huge beautiful stuctures. They were so touristy it was hard to take a good photo, we had to sneak off around the backs were nobody seems to go. This was our last day in Siem Reap, we booked a bus for the next day to Kratie. After our 5.30am alarm we got our bus, we took about 9 hours in total after a swap to a minibus half way through (really bumpy ride). Kratie is a riverside town, with narrow streets and a big market. We got ourselves a room and rested for the evening. The following day we got on a trip to visit the Irrawaddy Dophins, which cost us $10 each, we set off at 7am, tuktuk to the riverfrot & a boat from there. The trip was overall quite dissapointing, we hardly saw any dolphins and were back by 10am. We napped and went to the market, brought some pineapple and some rice and beans in a bamboo stick with a little coconut juice (a local speciality) and booked a bus to leave for Ban Lung. We watched a beautiful sunset that evening (see my facebook photos) with a beer, it was lovely. Once we arrived in Ban Lung Josh had been feeling sick all morning on the bus. We arrived at this hotel around 6pm called 'Star' it seemed ok at first for a $5 room, but we started to notice it was really dirty, ants all over the bathrooms, lots of cockroaches crawling in under the door, flys etc it was really horrible. Early the next morning Josh was feeling worse (D&S) so I went out to find a new hotel to swap to, I found one for $8 but it was so much nicer. Josh stayed in bed all day so I went an explored the market, which was so cheap, a bunch of bananas for 20p and I went off the look at tour offices. This town was very prone to powercuts which was bad for Josh stuck in the room. The next day Josh was a little better, I took him to have some food early morning and to check out some treks I'd found. Josh starting feeling bad again so he went back to the room for the day. We had some rice in the evening and just played cards. Josh was a little better the next day so we went for a big walk around the town, lots of sports being played by the locals, volleyball and bowls mainly. We relaxed for the rest of the day as we had an early start for our trek. The first day of our trek started at 8am, we went off with our trekking bags from a jeep ride to a boat to the first villiage. We were also with an Austrian journalist there to do a piece on rural villiages in Cambodia. We trekked through the forest for about 6 hours to a waterfall, stopping for lunch and water breaks. Josh and I were with a ranger, an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier, who lived near the jungle and a tour guide. We had a beautiful waterfall all to ourselves, it was so clear and we swam as soon as we arrived. Our tour guide cooked us dinner on a fire, we went to bed in our hammocks about 8pm. I was a bit ill in the night and didn't sleep well in a hammock, Josh was OK. We had a really hard start to the trek, up a mountain, it was so hard to walk. After this we walked a further 5 to 6 hours through the jungle to a village where we slept in a storage shed belonging to a farming family. We slept in our hammocks again but made them into tents, another early night. The final day was a lot easier, we visited a dam made in The Khmer Rouge era to force the farmers to try to continue farming all year round. We then visited a mass grave of the village from the Khmer Rouge era, where around 100 bodies were found. After we trekked to the centre of the village and visited the local primary school, cemetry and meeting room. The population is 1300. We had lunch in a locals house and got a boat to another village. The buildings were quite different here, more land also. We walked in on a local celebration, drunken Cambodians everywhere singing and swaying. We left back for the town after. One of the tour guides saw a small puppy on the road and stole it to have as his own, it was really cruel but is the kind of thing that hapens all the time there. The next day we wanted to get money out and the ATM's didn't accept our cards (all mastercard) and we only had about $46. We we planing on leaving the next day for Laos as our visas run out and go to Don Det, a small Island. But they don't have ATM's so we have to get a bus to Pakse, further up and miss the Islands, after paying for our bus we had only a few dollars, so we walked 8km to a lake which was lovely and clean and we swam. After we returned we spent almost our remaining money on some beer, bad priorities. The following day we got up, got on the bus and stopped for an hour at Stung Treng and got to the Laos border about 2pm, paid the stupid stamp fees and had to wait there until almost 6pm for our bus to Pakse. The man who worked there all seemed a bit dodgy but friendly and we tried to teach them card games but they didn't understand. When our bus arrived we were really happy, then we were told it was full and we had to get into the luggage compartment (under the bus). It was really uncomfortable, already had 3 people in and they said in 15 minutes it reaches Don Det, so we thought we would get a seat then. We arrived, the three got out and then another 3 girls and a man and his son got in, we had another 2 hours to go. It was horrible, the other girls were complaining explaining they had spent more money than the locals and didn't get a seat. The drivers assistant was just getting rude and threatening to throw us all off. We arrived and walked for about 90mins looking for a guest house. Everywhere was full becasue it was lame on a saturday night. We found one and just relaxed. The next day we wanted to go to the province's Museum but it was a public holiday so it was closed. We walked around, went to the market and we booked a bus for the next day to Savannakhet and had some dinner. We had a 5 hour bus ride, it was really uncomfortable. In Savannakhet, we went to a Dinosaur Museum as there are many fossils and bone remains from the area. A team of French Archeologists sponsor it. We went to a Karaoke bar in the evening which was very cheesey but a fun night. We hired bikes the next morning, cycling around the town and riverside was really nice. We cycled to the bus station to look at tickets for our next visit. We also tried some lovely barbequed Bananas, yum.