Kratie

We eventually arrived in Kratie which was alright.  I couldn't really say much about it.  We were there only for a couple of days.

It was like re-entering civilisation coupled with getting used to dealing with 2 currencies.  Quite confusing.  Sometimes you'll pay with dollars and they'll give you change in the local currency which is Riel and you have to give yourself a few minutes to figure out if it's correct.  So easy to get ripped off. It seemed like a friendly place though and was still on the Mekong but there was a lot of concrete and by this point we had turned into space cake hippies so...yeah.  Moving On!

We decided to move on to Siem Reap because I guess you can't go to Cambodia and not go to Angkor Wat.

We boarded an 11 hour bus from Kratie all the way to Siem Reap.  This was more like the buses in Thailand and it felt like heaven in comparison to what we had experienced a couple of days earlier.  Driving through the villages and towns to Siem Reap was quite interesting.  You really see how rural a large chunk of Cambodia is.  You'll drive through ages and ages of just rural landscapes with wooden houses built on stilts and families bathing in rivers and fishing or tending to their rice paddies.  Then you'll find yourself in a built up town all of a sudden that seems to clash with the world that it inhabits.  It's odd and the towns do have a European feel in some ways I guess because of the French influence on the countries history.  I wasn't feeling well so I did spend a lot of time staring out the window.