Inside cambodia

After three days in Phnom Penh, we travelled to Kratie where we arrived some 4-5hours of mini-van later (yep a full 250 km northeast) Kratie is a quiet and nice little town**, with still some pastel colored colonial architecture, along the Mekong river. Things to see and do are spotting the rare irrawaddy river dolphins and wandering around the center or on the little Island of Kaoh Trong just in front. And that's what we did. 

A short boattrip away (which makes for big adventures with three kids) the walk on the island was a bit short and it would have been fun to have some more time to get lost a bit more. Unfortunately with limited time, (tuktuk for the dolphins was picking us up at 2pm), no prior organisation and three small kids, some options where not for us (motodrop -just sit on the back of a motorbike and they drive you around - or biking )/and the cow with carriage that could come and pick us up wasn't available before 1 (?). The Mekong river really gives for a great backdrop of every activity, every drink you take, every little bank you sit on, all the nice, interested, cheeck-pinching and photo-taking Khmer people you meet on the riverside. 

(We decided now to do a picture for a picture, and when they are finished with their phone, we give them ours to have a picture as well) Kids played some cambodian instruments while we enjoyed the sunset and a drink over the river at the very nice Jasmine Boat café  restaurant.

Nice and honest by the way, as they stopped me on the street next day to give me the bottle of water we had paid for but not received!

The kids did their siesta in the tuktuk on the way to the dolphins, where we were indicated a small wooden motorboat to float a bit on the Mekong, spotting some of the 78 dolphins still alive. We did see some coming to the surface once in a while, but spoiled as we are, it wasn't the most exiting thing I ve seen. The calm river and the soft light of the end of the day, with three happy kids (not at all a guarantee on afternoon trips!) Did make for a nice trip out.

Some more hours of minivan away, back to the main road between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, we had a 2 nights stop in kampong Thom to cut the road in two (kids will refer to that trip as the trampoline van... So it was a welcome stop) and visit the less known (pre angkorien) temples of sambor prei kuk hidden in the forest.

A nice local community guide, local kids walking with us (and then at the end of the visit trying to sell us some scarfs) and being almost alone at this site (in huge contrast with what we would be experiencing in Siem Reap!!) Was great.

Also the comfy hotel and pool we had almost for us alone, was nice and relaxing (as real kids do, i guess, our kids remember this place as the bats' place -/for a colony of hundreds of bats we went to see on our first night and 'the hotel where Amélie got bitten by two red ants'. Life can be really hard for those little ones!

On the 20st we made it to Siem Reap. Our hotel being a little bit out of the centre, we didn't realise from the beginning just how touristic SR was!

What a difference with Kratie! Or even PP, though a lot of tourists, at least the capital seems to have a life on its own. Of course, in SR it is high high highest season with Christmas holidays just starting, a lot of Europeans, Australians and also Asiatics or Asian based expats come to SR , and of course, they do that to see the temples of Angkor, among which the wonder of Angkor Wat.

(Along the road)

** quiet, unless on the two nights of stay you culminate the noise of some construction works with the neighbours of our River Dolphin Hotel having their wedding party. When I first saw the street blocked by a colourful tent, lots of well decorated round tables with little plastic chairs, I thought 'great, how local! A wedding! Then when the van stopped and I realised it was really just next door we thought damn, a wedding next door. We ve seen a lot of weddings in the meantime, all have the same tents, decorated tables, plastic chairs, and seem to be organised that way. All have really excessively loud music...

In the river dolphin hotel in kratie Mattthias started to walk a little bit with help. Then fooling around he fell out of our bed, hurt his leg and we would have to wait some more days before he regained confidence again...