So, we're in Cambodia. We've been here a while now, but we've been in out-of-the-way places since our last entry and have not had any internet access.
Our first impressions of Cambodia were, sadly, not good. We had a fairly bad day getting to our first Cambodian stop. After three whole days lazing on Don Khon doing very little and enjoying it hugely, getting on the go again was inevitably going to be a shock. We booked bus tickets from the island (including boat journey across to the mainland) to the Cambodian border. From there, we thought, there must be non-tourist transport - songthaews or some other sort of excellent local transport. At the border we were absolutely fleeced for all we were worth: I don't mean by con-artists or touts - this was all legitimate. Just getting out of one country and into the next cost us enough and then it turned out there was no transport to anywhere other than one bus, for which they were charging $10. Now, this might not sound much to our readers who have an income and aren't trying to survive two months on hardly any money, but over here that is a huge amount of money for a short bus journey. We got it a bit cheaper, but still, because of this and other expensive bits, ended up spending four times our transport budget for the day.
We then got ripped off again when we got to Stung Treng, the not very inspiring town nearest the border. Getting tickets to our intended destination, Ban Lung, we got charged well over the normal price, as we were informed by a kind man in a cafe. Arguing it out with the man who sold us the tickets, he said he'd give us our money back if the bus driver gave us a lower price, and then phoned the bus driver to tell him not to tell us the price!
All in all, we weren't feeling very welcome in Cambodia. Our first stop was Ban Lung, a small town very much in the middle of nowhere in the northeast of Cambodia. To get to it, the bus took the only road that went there - a single-track very, very bumpy road at this time of year. The journey was one of the least comfortable I've ever made, which didn't leave us feeling much happier! To make things worse, the driver was absolutely crazy and took the whole thing at a great speed, the bus gradually falling to pieces as it went. Judging but the state of the suspension, it's not the first time it's done that route!
After fending off a lot of touts at the bus stop, we got to the guesthouse we wanted and got ourselves a cheap room. Fortunately, we had a decent stay in Ban Lung, which got us back on our feet. We stayed there two nights and walked to a nearby lake that is considered sacred by the native people. It's a traquil, very round, volcanic lake and you're able to swim in it, which of course we did. There's also an interesting little museum about the native tribe who still live around there. There wasn't a great deal in Ban Lung itself, but it had a nice market and felt pretty cut off from anywhere else.
The journey back along the bumpy road was slightly better than the journey there, though not much. It had rained while we were there, so the roads at the beginning were slippy rather than bumpy, which was quite scary at times, but the driver handled it ok. He was pretty crazy too, but a bit less than the last (they only recently introduced driving tests here and apparently they haven't made a lot of difference to standards).
We travelled a very long way that day and, leaving very early in the morning, arrived at our current stop, Kompong Cham, late in the afternoon. This is a relatively large town on the banks of the Mekong (isn't everything?). It's quite nice being back somewhere with such luxuries as banks and more than a few shops again. We've been here one night now and will move on to Phnom Penh tomorrow morning.
Generally, we're both extremely tired. Although we had several days of doing nothing to recover ourselves, I think we're just feeling the effects of over a month's travelling. However much we sleep, it seems to take very little to tire us out. I, for one, am just really quite fed up with always being a farang (term seemingly ubiquitous in this region for westerners). Still, we're doing a lot less and spending a lot more time sleeping than we were a month ago and are consequently still managing, I think, to enjoy the places we're staying.