Jill & George's trip: Kratie kids & red Ratanakiri

After a day in Phnom Penh arranging our Laos VISA and having one final walk around this great city, a place still very much in mourning, we were off again, this time heading northeast for Kratie a chunk of the way towards the Laos border.
Kratie is a small town which sits tight to the Mekong with rice fields and small villages in every other direction. It is also a great spot to see the very rare Irrawaddy dolphins. We spent our first afternoon wandering the streets and meeting the locals, to say they were welcoming is an understatement, as we walked the backroads that are on the edge of town, where the dirt tracks and fields begin, we were invited, by a group of 4 friends, to join them for some rice wine in their front garden. It was a really fun experience, and for $1 for a bottle of home brew, it would be a very cheap way to get smashed!
The following day we took a tuk tuk to Kampi to get a boat out to see the dolphins and were lucky enough to watch them swim around us for a hour. They are very rare in Cambodia with an estimated population of only 70. In the afternoon we hired bikes and jumped on a ferry over to Koh Trong an island in the Mekong with a small population who live there. The locals found us very funny as we grappled with our bikes to get them onto the boat which was a long, narrow, wooden thing that sat low in the water. We spent a few hours cycling around the island, waving to those we passed and smiling to the cries of "hello" that seemed to come from all directions. Word must have got around that we were about because as we approached a group of children they had set up a road block to halt us. Our only way past was to give high 5's and tell them our names and where we were from, it was very funny and they loved seeing themselves on a video Jill took.
After a good couple of days in Kratie we got a bus onwards for Ban Lung, a small town in Ratanakiri Province, the wild east! It was a nerve shredding and bumpy journey as far as Stung Treng, and then we turned off the main road onto the red dirt track that took us the final 3 hours into the heart of the province. We got off the bus well after the sun had vanished and made our way to the Tree Top Ecolodge where we were booked in for a couple of nights. It took us a while to find the deserted unlit road that would be our neighbourhood for the next few nights but it was well worth the trouble. Set in and around a tree covered ridge that overlooks a valley are about 10 wooden huts, all with amazing sunset views and hammocks. There was a relaxed and friendly communal area and great food, it was perfect (apart from the huge spider we shared the bathroom with on the first night).
We woke when the sun came up and hired bikes once more and ventured out into the Cambodian countryside, this time to the crater lake; a near perfectly circular lake surrounded by trees. After cycling for 30 minutes in 30+ temperature it was great to leap into the cold, clear water and cool off. And there was not a tourist in sight!
The following day was another chance to see more of the surrounding countryside, this time on the back of a couple of motos. The area is famous for it's red earth and after our 20 minute journey on the back of the bikes we looked like we had been on the fake tan! We went by elephant out into the forest and up to a waterfall, it was again a very hot day and the opportunity to cool off in it's pool proved to be too tempting. It had a rock shelf which meant I could swim in behind it which was pretty amazing. As we set off for the second waterfall of the day the motorbike Jill was on the back of got a flat, in the middle of nowhere and with little option she sandwiched herself in between me and my driver, the man with the worst bike and the loudest shirt, and we rode as a trio to the nearest repair shop with the other bike limping in behind us.
After our brief stop we were off again to see the final two waterfalls, one in a beautiful, secluded area with a rope bridge and another pool to swim in, the other a high, powerful waterfall that you could walk underneath for an eye watering power shower. That evening we watched the sun set with the locals overlooking the lake north of Ban Lung with a cold Angkor beer, and with that our Cambodia adventure came to an end.
The following day we headed for the border and Laos...