We left our hotel In Kratié, Cambodia after having enjoyed our last-things Cambodian. The bus took us to Stung Treng, Cambodia ( yes, that was a test to see if you read our last blog, it should have taken us to Don Det, Laos, the 4 thousand islands).

“So what happened?” I hear you ask.

Well……….first of all the hotel tuk tuk ran out of petrol en route to the bus station, Vanessa started getting worried that we would miss the bus (actually caused by Phil’s comments that it’s a 10 min walk from here so we were already too late and other useful observations). After having waited for an hour at the bus station (so Vanessa wasted a lot of energy with needless worrying!) they told us the bus had broken down and we would therefore be unable to get to the border crossing before it closed. That was a strange concept for Europeans, a border closing – or even a border, but I’ll not get into Brexit here! We could travel to Stung Treng that day and then they would organise a minibus for the following day or we could catch the bus tomorrow- oh, sorry, there is no bus tomorrow! Funnily enough we all opted for the ‘go to Stung Treng today’ option. Rapid questions of “Do you have WiFi?” from the 8 people involved as everyone tried to find accommodation in Stung Treng and alter their pre-made bookings for that night. We were pretty chilled about it, these things happen but one couple were definitely starting to suffer from ‘frustrasian’ an ailment that Nathan had warned us about. We just got the opportunity to look around another provincial Cambodian town.

The bus was repaired and duly arrived just as we had walked around the corner to buy some lunch. We were on the bus no more than 10 minutes when the bus, you’re clearly ahead of me here, stopped for lunch !

One of the things we have spotted whilst travelling around Cambodia is the large storage jars outside the houses. We had learnt that these jars are used for storing water, it is drained off the roof when it rains ( or filled with any other available water when it doesn’t!). We are heading to the rains in May so they should soon all be full. We were a little perturbed to see a small grubby boy using his family’s water jar as a paddling pool, I hope they boil the water before drinking it! When it rains the brown fields will then turn green as the rice is planted. The drab colour of Cambodia will change almost overnight. In many regards we were sad not to see this transformation but we had left the UK largely to avoid the rain!

We passed through numerous police check points, every 50 km or so, but they could just have been province borders. Buses and tour operators were not stopped so we never found out what they were for.

So with the opportunity granted to us by the Sorya 168 bus company, we explored Stung Treng and we were amazed again at the number of pharmacies. We had talked to the English School organiser in Kratié who said that she had been strongly advised not to take a sick volunteer to the hospital but to go to a pharmacy. We wonder if this is still a residue of the Pol Pot era when all the doctors were executed, it must take time to rebuild. (Mind you, it was more than a little odd seeing a 3 year old playing with her mum in the shop next door with mum holding the child’s drip up).

We have found the Cambodian people very gentle and quite shy, so generous (the New Year’s party we went to being an obvious example) and very smiley if you smile at them. The men (and boys) love the little children and so proudly try to make their babies wave to us. They are all very keen to learn English so we get “Hello, how are you?” shouted at us from all sorts of people, including motorbikes whizzing past. In the restaurants we try and say hello in Khmer but they are pretty capable at taking our orders in English. We have been surprised that a spoon and fork seem to be the weapon of choice at mealtimes rather than chopsticks.

They are due to have a general election in June (?) but really there is only one party, the real opposition party was neutralised recently and the other 2 parties are too small or subservient to the main party to offer a practical alternative. From the people we have spoken to, the older citizens don’t want to rock the boat but the younger ones recognise that corruption and cronyism is rife change would be positive. It will be interesting to see if and how they can bring this about.

So waking up in Stung Treng we were ready to continue our onward journey to Laos, stopping for coffee en route to the bus station. Thank you Sorya, it was the best coffee we’ve had since leaving Australia. If you are ever in this town, look for the 1979 coffee shop, it’s on the other side of the road and further away from the river than google maps mark it. (Ummm, we have had fun with google maps putting things in the wrong place or ‘moving’ them before. Phil had fun in Phuket finding a supermarket!).

The special 12.30 pm minibus left promptly at 2.15pm. We drove out of town and back and by 2.45pm we’re driving back into town the second time! “The driver forgot to pick up 3 people”. Hold on, we only have one empty seat and the luggage hold is full of mangoes. The 3 extra passengers never materialised so after we had all filled in the visa forms we set off again. We rattled over the roads which got worse with every passing mile as we approached the border.

It all felt a little subversive and we started to play games with the faces, she said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy, I said be careful his bow tie is really a camera.

Our conspiracy theories grew when we stopped to “help” a broken down truck. It got worse – why did we have so many mangoes in the back of the van, was it to hide any smell of the contraband ? This theory was strengthened when the driver was handed a bag of fairly pungent fish for helping the broken down truck. What else was in the bag? Why were we driving so fast prior to seeing the broken down vehicle and why now were we driving so slowly in comparison? Was it to make sure we arrived at the border just before it closed so that the guards were more interested in going home than looking too closely?

The Stung Treng border crossing is infamous for corruption. All the reviews tell you a guy will be on your bus and for $5 will help you through, paying the necessary bribes. They also said doing it on your own and refusing to pay can result in the bus driving off without you. So in Gallic fashion we shrugged our shoulders and paid up. Everyone on our bus did the same – they were the same guys who had been travelling up from Kratie with us and, like us, just wanted to get there. We were stamped out of Cambodia and then our guide jumped on a motorbike and sped off with all our passports to the Laos guards – fortunately he came back 5 minutes later clutching all our passports with our visas enclosed. We were now allowed into Laos!

After having turned down the guides offer of exchanging US dollars to Kip at an abysmal rate we found an ATM at the port town of Nakasong. A 10 minutes ferry trip and we arrived on the island of Don Det only 21 hours later than planned!