KRATIE 8TH - 12TH JANUARY 2007

After stopping in Phnom Penh for two nights we hired an XR-250 for four days to go off on our own little mission.

We left Phnom Penh north on the main highway to Kratie, 348km, stopping the night in Kompong Cham, a good half way point. This road is now surfaced making for a smooth ride. Kompong Cham is a quiet town spread along the bank of the Mekong River. There is not a lot to see but it made for a peaceful stop for the night.

We stopped in Kratie for two nights, it is a compact, pretty, well preserved riverside town with pleasent places to eat. It is the best place in the country to see the rare Irrawaddy dolphins, which live in the Mekong River in ever-diminishing numbers. Seeing the dolphins was our main insentive to traverlling to Kratie.

Kampi, about 15km north of Kratie is the place to see the dolphins, from here we took a motor boat out to the middle of the river to view the dolphins at close quarters. They are very shy but we spent an hour on the river watching them swim back and forth. It was very peaceful and wonderful to see them.

On our way back we stopped one more night in Kompong Cham to break up the journey. We took a different route back, Kratie to Kompong Cham, a more scenic route for motorbikes which follows the Mekong River rather than the main highway. This is a very beautiful route through rural villages, on dirt tracks, where you see no westeners, only locals waving as you pass. If you stop, within five seconds, you have thirty kids surrounding you, starring. It was great to see this rural, remote side of Cambodia. Now, when I say great!... the first two hours were great, the roads were bumpy but it was easy to see we were headed in the right direction, but after two hours it got really differcult.... Roads weren't even roads! we were riding through peoples back gardens and sand pits and farmers fields with loads of turning and no roads signs. We had a map but couldn't tell one village from the next, there were loads of locals about but no-one could say more than "hello" in english. We eventually made it, after another five hours but it was hard going, we were covered in dust and dirt from head to toe and so releaved when we finally saw the tarmack bridge into town. A great adventure to look back on!

Once arriving back in Phnom Penh we stopped two more night before heading to Siem Reap. This was longer than planned because we wer both pretty ill and couldn't travel. We have both been really poorly with painful cramps and the s***s for the past 10 days which has been horrible and exhasting! From our symptoms and reading up on it, we think we have 'Giardiasis' which is caused by a common water parasite. We have purchased some drugs from the pharmacy for this to hopefully sort it out!