Kratie, Cambodia (Day 3, Part 2)

Back to Phnom Penh

I saw this poster near the market in Kratie. Strangely, the place wasn't a restaurant or bar, nor did they have American beer. Which is just as well. Who comes to Kratie for "American Time" (whatever that is) and horrible beer, anyway?

This morning I woke up at 5:30 to catch a tourist van (or “mini-bus”) from Kratie to Phnom Penh. I was told to expect a pick-up at 6 a.m., or maybe 6:30, or possibly 7, or maybe 7:30. I went to have breakfast at 6, was served at around 6:30, and at 7:20 the tourist van rolled in. Five of us found seats, then we were driven up the road about 400 meters and, without any explanation, made to get into another van. This proved to be quite interesting as an observer because some of us were going to Phnom Penh and others to Siem Reap. No one told us that we were all going to the same place initially, at which point we would separate, so there was a lot of disorder, including shouting between tourists (in English) and tourist company staff (in Khmer), and a German woman telling the staff “fuck off, don’t touch me,” and “be careful with my fucking equipment, you’ll break it handling it like that,” and later, in the van, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Slow down! (The driver was barreling through peaceful village roads full of wandering cats, dogs, chickens, and children at about 65 miles per hour.) I’ll fucking kill you if you hit something. I’ll kill you!” She turned out to be very nice, actually, and was in SE Asia to recruit local people to take part in music videos she and her partner were making over the course of their travels. Still, that kind of approach with people in Indochina is seriously counterproductive (as it is in 99% of the world). Cultural sensitivity? It goes both ways, of course, but there are lines you simply don’t cross. In my experience, telling people to fuck off and that you’ll kill them kinda crosses that line…

I ended up in a window seat, squeezed in with three Cambodian men, two pieces of luggage (piled up beneath my feet), and a live, tied-up chicken in a yellow plastic bag. One of the men beside me worked for the tourist company taking us to Phnom Penh. He deduced that I was traveling alone, and with various hand gestures he asked me why I didn’t have a wife with me as the Europeans on board did. I shrugged. Then he seemed to indicate that he and I would make a good pair, ending our exchange with his hands displaying “1” and “5” (or was it “5” and “1”?), whatever that means—I know I had no clue. Shortly after that he began to play with the hair on my arms, then inspected and stroked my fingers, then rubbed and tapped my fingernails, and when we stopped to pick up a Cambodian woman (with a wedding ring on her finger) he tried to introduce her to me. Wisely, she ignored him. I began to ignore him at this time, too, so he turned his attention on the German man with long blond hair sitting in front of us and started doing the same thing to him. About an hour later the man fell asleep with his head on my shoulder, and when I carefully leaned forward he fell bodily behind me and continued to sleep with his face wedged between the seat and my lower back. He was there for a good 30-40 minutes. On the positive side, I guess all of this made the time pass more quickly.

I was sad to leave Kratie, as it’s such a lovely, peaceful, slow-paced town. I was more than happy to leave my guesthouse, though. While the Cambodian staff at The Balcony were very nice, and worked hard in the kitchen to make some very tasty food, the Aussie owner left a lot to be desired. He had little good to say about Cambodian people, was stuffy and self-important, and wasn’t willing to help with the mini-millipede infestation I had in my room (even though he told me that millipede bites can be very dangerous). When I settled my bill at the end, he gave me change in paper bills, two of which had the corners substantially ripped off, and which I haven’t been able to spend anywhere since. I must say, too, that it would have been nice if the guesthouse had cleaned my room once in four days, changed my towel once, and emptied the bathroom wastebasket occasionally since guests are asked to refrain from flushing toilet paper. It would also be nice if they provided soap. Generally, when one arrives after a long journey, one wants to clean up just a little, and it's a bit disappointing to have to walk to the market and buy something so basic. I do not recommend The Balcony (despite the nice local staff), though I do recommend, highly, Oudom Sambath Hotel, whose owner was not only very friendly (and fluent in English), but also eager to help his guests. It’s more expensive than The Balcony (the most expensive room at OSH is $25, the least expensive is $8), but it’s still cheap and the quality of accommodations is much better here. The food is excellent, too. The owner has a harrowing story about growing up during the Cambodian conflict, and the fact that he is where he is today is amazing. If I return to Kratie, I’d want to support his business again, which in turn helps support his family, who were destitute and suffered a great deal not very long ago.

Oudom Sambath Hotel is located at 439 Rue Sumamari (Riverside Street). Tel: 072-971537.

FYI: I took Sorya Bus Lines from Phnom Penh to Kratie. The cost was $5, the bus was clean and comfortable, but the trip took 7.5 hours (not the 5 hours they quote). They stop twice for food/restrooms. For my return to Phnom Penh I booked a seat on a van through my hotel. The cost was $6.50 and the trip took 4.5 hours, with one stop for lunch shortly before arriving in Phnom Penh. The van was a bit cramped, and a bit crazy, but the trip’s shorter duration is worth whatever hassles I had to deal with.

Kratie, Cambodia (Day 4)

Last night I decided to make another run to Kampi to see the river dolphins. I figured that for only $15 it would be worth it, and I also thought that in the morning the dolphins might be even more active than in the late afternoon. I got up at 5:30 in order to meet a tuk-tuk driver who would take me there, but at 6:00, when I went downstairs, I saw that the guesthouse had forgotten to arrange this. Fifteen minutes later they flagged down a motorcycle taxi driver and he took me there.

I just made it on board before this gang of outlaws caught up to us. Luckily, they didn't have $9 to join us. Otherwise, I'd probably be dead now.

Hello! Actually, it wasn't waving at me (I don't think; I still waved back, though), but slapping the surface of water as if to stun whatever fish might be swimming there.

As you can see, they came pretty close to our boat. They swam right past the side of the boat once, but it was hard to see them.

They're so friendly, waving all the time...

The water was pretty clear, and I'm sure it would have been even clearer had it not been cloudy that morning. I asked the boat driver how deep the water here was, and he said, "Yes." Spreading my hands apart from top to bottom I then asked if it was much deeper than that, to which he replied, "Yes." So there you go.

 

One of the islands up close.

I'm pretty sure that this was a fish (tilapia, maybe?) the dolphins killed by smacking the water with their fins. I read somewhere how the dolphins were once seen killing a giant catfish (250 kg) with their tails, and then not eating it. The giant fish just floated downriver. No one is sure what their motivation for doing that might have been.

People still fish in the endangered dolphin's habitat. They're no longer allowed to fish with gill nets, as dolphins sometimes get caught in them and drown. I was told, though, that local people can't enforce this easily because their physical safety would be put at risk. The same is true for fishing with electricity, a practice that doesn't discriminate at all over what fish get killed.

The young man who took me out that morning.

I took this photo at the very last second from the back of a motorbike. I just aimed and shot, and this is what I got. This guy is seriously loaded down with baskets, which when stacked together like that are heavy!

When I got back to Kratie, I decided to hit the local tourist information center to get copies of two tourist brochures I saw at my guesthouse that I thought were interesting. Amazingly, they had nothing but 20 copies of a single page out of a brochure—and it was for the town of Stung Treng, not Kratie. They hadn’t had anything in their office for several months, apparently, though the office had at least six people working there, and I suspect there were others in back rooms that I couldn’t see. It was fun talking to one of the workers in English, but otherwise it wasn’t a productive trip.

I came back and fueled up for the day with a hearty little breakfast.

As I continued walking through town, I passed through the market area looking for signs with Vietnamese writing and listening for spoken Vietnamese. I ended up meeting a Chinese-Vietnamese woman across from the Kratie market. She was extremely pleasant to talk to, and equally interesting. Her parents moved to Cambodia shortly after she was born, refugees from the American War. I’m not sure where she settled, but eventually her parents came to Kratie, which had a large Vietnamese military presence from 1979-1990. She was educated in Phnom Penh but has been living and working in Kratie for many years. She speaks fluent English, Vietnamese, Chinese, Khmer, Thai, and a bit of French. She makes her living importing and exporting to countries all around Asia, and travels extensively. In her home in Kratie, the front of which doubles as a family business, she teaches primary and secondary school students computers and English. The English lessons she gives are free, and for computer lessons she only charges her students for electricity. She also just adopted a four-month-old Khmer boy, as his mother was too impoverished to raise him herself. She didn’t know much about the local history, but she did tell me that in the early nineties, when traveling overland to Vietnam, the car she was in was shot at by Khmer Rouge, who then robbed them as they lay dazed in their overturned car. I haven’t talked to a great many people here about their lives here at that time, but those I have done this with have all told me equally harrowing stories. In any event, I hope to visit her again before I leave, though one of her Cambodian staff pressed me to spend time in his village just outside of Kratie, which is nice, I know, but not really what I’m looking for at this stage of my trip here.

In the afternoon I decided to walk to Kratie stadium, which I’d been told is where some UNTAC forces used to stay, in tents, for at least part of their peacekeeping duties in the town. (Later, though, I was told that they were housed in a large, former garage of some kind.) There wasn’t much here other than a small seating box, two net-less goals, brown scrub grass, and an unstable wall surrounding the field.

Next to the stadium was a private high school and language center. I met a 13-year-old female student there, whose English was excellent, and we spoke about her studies for a bit, and I answered her question about why I was photographing her school (I'm sure it seemed strange to her), before I decided to move on.

The last place I visited on my walk was Wat Pachha, a 27-year-old pagoda full of monks in orange robes who were studying for a big exam the next day. A few of them spoke English, and they practiced on me for quite a while.

After half an hour they seemed to have run out of questions for me, so I attempted to leave the pagoda but was stopped again and invited for a chat with the head monk and his assistant, both of whom spoke English pretty well.

As we talked, and I learned that these two monks later wanted to become, respectively, a businessman and an English teacher, and after being surprised to see an older monk smoking cigarettes and then being reminded by a younger monk to remove my hat (I’d completely forgotten I was wearing one), I found myself growing very hot, very thirsty, and very tired.

The head monk’s interest in me soon waned, and then his assistant told me he had a lesson to teach the other monks now, so we said our goodbyes and I continued the rest of my walk home.