Ratanakiri: Veung Sai, More of the Same

Today played out more or less like yesterday except it started earlier, the bicycles were replaced with motorbikes and we tried our luck with Voen Sai, a village quite far North of Ban Lung. Actually, thinking about it now, today played out nothing like yesterday.

To start the day, we headed to Psar Ban Lung, the wet market right behind the taxi station, where we bought ourselves some very stylish SARS masks to keep dust from clogging our lungs. Mine's a dark grey Burberry plaid.

A peeing contest taking place in the market's parking lot. Good thing I'm not on the receiving end of it this time:

The road to Voen Sai isn't in the best of conditions and certain stretches require quite a bit of effort to navigate. Luckily, I was the passenger today:

Being the passenger gave ample opportunity to try my hand at drive by photography.

The approach:

SURPRISE!:

In true drive by fashion, we sped off after taking the above photo.

One should note that drive by photography doesn't elecit the same response from lazy water buffalo who are too busy wallowing in mud to care.

There wasn't anything going on at the Southern bank of the river in Voen Sai aside from an expensive (for the area) two minute boat ride to the opposite side. The area of the town we visited consists of a fair number of ramshackle huts in a rural Cambodian setting; Something we'd already seen in Kratie so we passed on the boat ride and doubled back to Ban Lung for a quick lunch at the American Restaurant.

Women wash their dishes close to the boat's launching point in Voen Sai:

Further upstream, more villagers bathe and hunt for snails:

We finished off the daylight hours goofing off at the meteor lake again, where I temporarily lost my only pair of glasses. Thankfully, Thien An salvaged them from the lake bed right after I slipped and bruised my backside (and my ego) on the dock in my panic.

Ratanakiri: Late Night Hauntings and Meteor Crater Lakes

An overactive imagination kept me up ‘til the wee hours last night, forcing me to sleep through my alarm clock this morning. It’s embarrassing to admit but I’d somehow convinced myself that the room next door, the one I switched out of yesterday (because the used condom I found under the bed was attracting ants), was haunted. See, I’m the only one staying in this particular building and it’s prone to blackouts. Strange thing about this "haunted" room is, every time I pass it, the door’s always open. Stranger still, I lock and close the door each time I pass it so it should remain shut. Aside from the slight hum of my fan, the building is silent so I should be able to hear the door clicking open. Suffice it to say, I spent a good portion the night staring wide eyed at the ceiling, imagining the worst as one of the creaking window shutters banged on its frame in tandem with the wind. Things worked out though, I wasn’t visited by anything supernatural over the night and Andrew, Thien An and Caroline had slept in as well.

Following brunch at the “American Restaurant” (a hole in the wall place on the opposite side of town) we hopped on our rented bicycles and rode Eastwards to Boeng Yeak Lom, a perfectly round 700,000 year old meteor crater lake.

A krama dust mask for the bike ride:

We spent what little we had left of the afternoon swimming in the lake.

This guy looks a little confused:

Gutted by termites:

Travel Day: Ban Lung, Ratanakiri

The four of us loaded up our bags into the trunk of our shared taxi and climbed into its far from spacious back seat to continue our journey further off the beaten path. The destination, Ban Lung in Ratanakiri province (but we prefer to call the town Ratanakiri because it has a nicer ring to it).

Where limited few barang (foreigners) are still visible in and around Kratie (usually around the town center and in guesthouse commons), virtually none stay in Ratanakiri. We made it a game to see who would be first to spot another tourist. It was a tie much later in the afternoon.

Not too many paved roads exist in Ban Lung’s backwater main stretch, where red dust kicked up by passing vehicles obscures visibility to a couple of hundred feet.

So prevalent is the dust, everything exposed to the elements is caked in it:

Local men convene at the town center's taxi station for a game of pool:

Neglecting their dirty old motorbikes parked nearby: