Kratie was full of very Cambodian experiences. We went on a minibus, which is the equivalent of a South American colectivo; people ring the driver en route to be picked up, or they stand on the side of the road and flag it down. It stops constantly to pick up or drop people wherever they want to go, as well as parcels and letters that it has on board.
The driver picks up as many people and objects as want to get on. The driver on the way to Krabie had make shift seats for every available space, and when those ran out people just squash up! Once again, being the only foreigners aboard we were left with one whole seat each. No one wants to sit with us.
Kratie was small. A great, local little town with not much else other than a huge market. Ladies sat all day flicking cloths over their stalls so the flies didn’t settle on the meat! Cambodians don’t really sit on chairs; we’ve noticed that they sit on flat surfaces so imagine them actually sat on the stall, surrounded by meat, constantly battling with the flies!
I love the sugarcane stalls they have here. There are purpose-made machines which sellers attach to their motorbikes and drive around. They look like old sewing machines, are started up by a pulley system and are made to juice sugarcane. They feed the cane and limes through the machine and then open the bottom to get the juice out. The result is delicious and costs 20p a cup! (It comes in a plastic cup, you get multiple straws and a specially shaped plastic bag to carry it in. This is Cambodia, we don’t care about the oceans here…!)
A Cambodian favourite for lunch here is a pate baguette. There are lots of stalls that sell this and then have tiny stools to sit on with low tables. The pate, with onion paste and other more questionable things are served inside the big baguette. You then get a tub of spring onion and cucumber, along with a plate of Asian salad to add as you like. We have had these enough to know that we have to try the salad before putting it all in; sometimes it’s very spicy! I was aware of all eyes watching us when the lady gave us our baguettes, and then we used the fork to test out the salad rather than put it in our baguettes there was a collective HOWL of laughter from the surrounding tables, followed by lots of gesturing to put it in the sandwich, and then lots of passing of various sauces to be added to it to. Cambodians are hilarious.
We rented scooters the next day for our day out in Kratie, and things got even more local. Cambodians build their houses on stilts; we saw little wooden shacks on stilts, and then slightly nicer houses on stilts but all are just one simple room. They all sleep together and the cooking happens outside. There is only one road going in to Kratie, and one coming out so we just drove and drove…
Most things happen outside so we saw all aspects of life in Kratie that day; people washing outside with their towels wrapped around them, meat drying, fish being bought up from the river below for sale, monks hanging out their robes, even a loud wedding!
The scooters are just unbelievable; I was overtaken by young boys, constantly. They must have been 8-years old at the most, and often have two friends on the back! I saw a man driving his scooter, which was pulling some kind of huge ploughing machine. As I drove past him I noticed his daughter, who was hanging on to the machinery as it bumped down the road! We saw a man driving along holding up a huge machete and a scooter covered with what looked like hundreds of dead ducks. The best one though, was a scooter laden with huge, wide, thick planks of wood. It was stacked crazily high, to about ten feet. I was gawping at this one already but then noticed that the top of the stack sat the guy’s wife, crossed legged without anything to hold on to! This craziness isn’t even the odd person; scooters are the main form of transport here and the majority are carrying things. Health and safety does not exist!
Cambodians are very, very friendly. The children will come out and “HEL. LOW!”, then lots of giggling. They chase you and high five if they can catch you (they can catch me on my scooter because it only goes at about 10mph, maximum!). We were way past normal tourist territory here so some were a little more curious. They look and smile but don’t say anything. When we bought our baguettes on this day, a man served us and then shouted something at his daughter inside the house (presumably to bring his money..) she came running out of the house but stopped dead when she saw gringos. She then shyly went back up the stairs and hid watching us until we left.
We took the scooters to a point along the Mekong where we knew you could get boats out to see the dolphins. We got in a boat with this guy who didn’t speak English but just “OI!”, “OI!” whenever he spotted one. I wasn’t even sure whether we would see dolphins on that day but we saw many. Never really close but that was great; I assumed, this being Asia, that they would be swarming around the dolphins and feeding them, but it was brilliant. Very natural.
After visiting the dolphins, we went on to a turtle sanctuary. There is a soft-shelled turtle in the Mekong that they are trying to save from extinction but it was the strangest, quirkiest visit of our entire trip. This woman also didn’t speak any English except “look, look” as she threw the couple of turtles that they owned their food, walked around in very dirty, huge cartoon slippers, showed us a documentary (which was actually the UK TV show River Monsters, filmed at the centre!) and then forced us out the door. We left laughing; it was so strange!
As we drove back I had the same feelings I have had on many parts of this trip; looking at the people and thinking… you have bloody amazing wildlife right there. You are SO lucky! But also, how they don’t care because looking at the way they live; preserving those dolphins is not their first priority.
Lastly, I noticed that the shacks Cambodians live in, the lack of proper toilets and sometimes even running water was in big contrast to the fact that EVERYONE is sitting outside their homes on iphones and ipads… This world is crazy.
STAY | We stayed in Balcony Kratie hotel, which I definitely recommend.
VISIT | Dolphins boats go out at $9 / £6.50 per boat. No set time; a driver will appear whenever a group turns up; thoroughly recommended. Turtle sanctuary was $4 / £2.90 per person which is just crazy. A good laugh but NOT worth the money.
