Day 68 - Cambodia wild-east exploration

So we've been in Cambodia for 5 days now, most of which we've been spending on buses getting around, but have also been doing a fair amount of our usual exploring...

Upon crossing the border from Laos, we settled in the nearest city to the border for the night – Sung Treng. It was a bit of a shit hole to tell the truth, and not the best introduction to Cambodia, so we promptly sort out a bus the hell out of there. We were keen to do some more rural stuff before the planned onslaught of touristy attractions we had planned ahead. So we headed East to a place called Ban Lung in the province of Ratanakiri.

The shithole that is Sung Treng – the best image I could find to take of the place

The road was pretty rough, and the mini bus crammed to well over capacity – Cambodian people tend to overcrowd transport to bursting point, and we've seen minibuses that look like a 'maximum number of people in a mini' world record attempt, with a handful of people thrown on the roof for goods measure. We were sold the tickets with the assurance we would have one whole seat each, and thanks to some Czech tenacity it stayed that way as the local squashed around us. The road was the roughest I'd ever experienced off a bike so far. It was little more than a dirt track through arid forestland with a surface that would take apart monster truck suspension. Our driver was really going for it, then slowing rapidly every few kilometres to a crawl, crossing rickety old wooden bridges that are all in a scary state of disrepair. He held his fist to the windscreen as a sign of minibus driver comradeship at every oncoming bus that nearly drove us off the 'road'. All the while we watched endless androgynous Thai pop stars performing incomprehensible renditions on the screen of the in-car karaoke system.

The road was dusty, dusty like we'd never seen – think red dust that just got everywhere, and blinded you as oncoming vehicles tore up the surface at high speed. The town is nicknamed 'red-earth' by the locals after it's rust-coloured affliction.

The dusty town of Ban Lung – the wild-west of Eastern Cambodia, and the hunk of junk Honda Dreams we rented to get around this wasteland

We arrived in one piece, and booked into friendly little hotel that served the best food in town. Our plan was to hire motorbikes again and do some of the sights, and see some villages. The first day of which was a really lazy one. Guess we were pretty whacked after all the travelling, so went to see a lake, and 2 waterfalls. The lake was a water-filled extinct volcano crater that provided a refreshing break from the searing heat of the midday sun. It was also a nice way to remove the dust that we were completely covered in after only a few kilometres of driving.

Waterfalls on our first day of exploring...

Second day of driving we headed north in an attempt to find some isolated villages we'd read about in the sacred lonely planet. After some really fun driving down some seriously off-road paths, again coated in thick red dust, we hit our destination of Voen Sai, on the banks of the Tonle San river where we had a quick nose around, before taking a short but well deserved rest. We happened to stop for a drink in a place where a friendly English speaking chap offered us a boat tour up and down the river to see some villages that we wouldn't be able to reach on our own, and a cemetery. Sounded cool, so we hoped on board and headed upstream. There cemetery was creepy – embedded in the forest, were tens of shrine-like wooden graves, some hundreds of years old, each with carved figures depicted a story of the individuals unfortunate end.

Creepy village-cemetery in the jungle

Afterwards we wondered through the village, which we found to be a huge contrast to our village experiences to date. Unlike the curiosity en-mass we'd experienced stumbling into isolated villages in Laos by bike, here (even with a local guide) there was an air of unfamiliarity and almost fear directed at us. It was easily dismissed with a simple greeting and smile, but the people were so much more cut-off from civilisation than anywhere else we'd been, I guess they just didn't know what to do. Some people simply ran away, but we got to interact briefly with a few, and were able to see there way of life in a way that wouldn't of been possible without our guide. It’s amazing and lovely to think such isolated communities cut-off from the developing world still exist in these countries.

Village life for these people can be hard – many houses are in a deteriorating state as the families can't afford to fix them once damaged.

Two days of driving in the dust had fulfilled Petr and my satisfaction for this corner of the country, and we were keen to press onto Angkor Wat. Not really being Lukas' bag, he decided to remain behind and catch up in a few days – tagging onto the back end of our 3 days exploring the ruins. Onto a coach (we leaned our lesson – no more minibuses!) Petr and I went for a lovely 11 hour drive to the capital Phnom Penh. Here we just stayed the night in the travellers district which seemed to be a real party area – somewhere we'll be returning to properly on our way back down the country. Straight back onto another coach the following morning for 5 more hours to get us to Siem Reap the town just outside the vast complex of ancient Angkor temples.

An afternoon of exploring the small town and sorting our plans for some kick ass tomb raiding for the next few days, now we're fed, relaxed (after a massage to work out the two days of travelling), half-dunk and ready to rock tomorrow morning.

This is our Cambodian visual-journey update map – covered quite a lot in a few short days haven't we? Next time – Angkor temples, then back to the capital to see how the city folk here live...

The map above is pretty big, so here's a closer look at our current location:

As always, you can see Lukas' updated snaps here.

One last thing, as I'm, finishing here, a giant rat just crawled over my foot then climbed the wall behind me.... eeww! I'm outta here! TTFN.