Indelible Roots

1/18/2008

Early on Friday I get a moto taxi to Meggie’s place for the trip to Kratie (pronounced Kra Ches) to see the few remaining Irriwadi fresh water dolphins. Arriving at 7am I walk about to try to find some breakfast to no avail, but got some cereal and yogurt from Meggie. It wasn’t bad actually. The transfer bus was to take us from here to the bus station at 7:20. It arrived at 7:50 as I had expected and hurriedly took us and a half dozen other westerners to this company’s bus terminal.

Seven hours later we arrived in Kratie, a small provincial town on the Mekong River several hundred kilometers north and west of Phnom Penh. Immediately the bus was mobbed by locals selling guest house services. One actually got on the bus and gave his spiel to the blond couple one row ahead of us. Getting off the bus we were hammered on all sides with promises of nice views and cheap rooms. We had already decided on one and went with the guy from that guesthouse.

The Heng Heng II guesthouse is one block south of the bus terminal as are the vast majority of the guesthouses here. The single market is also one block away and this constitutes down town Kratie. At the guesthouse we were shown two rooms on the third floor, but were told that only one of them was available for the entire weekend. No problem, I would take the one nighter and find a different room tomorrow.

We then proceeded to search for food, a late lunch, and wander the down town area. We ate at the guesthouse restaurant which provided the blandest and one of the worst services I’ve had at a restaurant in the country. Walking the downtown area and checking out the market took all of thirty minutes as it encompasses only about four square blocks near the river front.

The next day we hired two motos and drivers to take us out for the day. Our first stop was at Sombak Mountain, a surprisingly peaceful mediation center consisting of many huts up a couple of hundred concrete steps where monks and nuns come to meditate. It was one of the most serene and peaceful spots I’ve encountered here.

After a side trip to a many pillared wat, we ended up at the dolphin boat tours area and paid our fees for the boat. Since no one else was there at the same time, we got the little boat to ourselves at only a slightly higher cost, seven dollars apiece. The boat took us and one of the moto drivers about two hundred meters into the Mekong where we immediately encountered a trio of grey dolphins surfacing here and there, batting fish out of the water, and even waving at us once (it laid on its side and rolled.) Multiple attempts at capturing them on film proved fairly unsuccessful for my little digital camera.

We then got suckered into going swimming up river a few hundred yards. The boat landed on one of many sandbars in the river and let us off. The water was surprisingly clear and appeared quite clean. And after hours of walking and riding in the hot hot sun, we were glad to have brought our bathing suits. It wasn’t until we had reached the dock again that the driver asked us for more money for the swimming portion. I’m sure the moto driver was complicit in the scam as he had mentioned it would cost more to swim and we made it clear to him that we didn’t want to do that. Rather, we had agreed to go up river a few hundred yards and swim off the bank afterwards prior to getting on the boats.

Returning to the guesthouse we are met by another man at the desk who goes on to tell us that neither of our rooms was available for the rest of the weekend. He tells me to just move to the lower floor rooms which I then went to check out. The first one had a window that looked through the store next door. The other two had windows that looked onto the building next door, all of twelve inches away. I told him no and Meggie went on a tirade that got her another room on the top floor. We then go off to find dinner and a new room for me.

The next morning I awoke in the other guesthouse down the block to find the lights out and the water absent. It took me a few minutes to realize that there wasn’t going to be any water coming out of the showerhead. A call to Meggie proved the power outage to be widespread, but the water problem wasn’t, so I headed over there for a shower.

Upon entering I was accosted by the guesthouse desk guy who kept asking me why I didn’t sleep here last night. Not yet awake I wave him off and went up stairs. But upon exiting for breakfast he again asks us why I didn’t sleep there. It turned out that he thought I had agreed to one of the nasty rooms on the first floor and was rather mad that that was not the case. I left him fuming as he wasn’t being very pleasant and had no desire to settle things nicely. Needless to say that would be the last time I would ever enter the Heng Heng group of guesthouses or restaurant.

After breakfast we walked a few blocks to a bicycle rental shop and obtained two rather old bikes for two dollars for the day. The guesthouse had wanted double that amount. With our pack lunches in the backpack, we rode down the same narrow, tree lined road meandering along the river. Almost every child we rode by waved and yelled “hello” to us. I felt like I was cruising in the Tour de France.

About halfway to our destination we passed a local on a bicycle who also said “hello.” A few minutes later he pulled alongside me and started to talk in English. He said he was an English teacher and was going to meet his students at the dolphin dock to practice English. Talking with him was like pulling to a tree that echoed. His responses were invariable “yes…I’m sorry I don’t understand…can you say it slower.” My joyful ride turned into an excruciating exercise in self control and diplomacy. About fifteen minutes later a moto pulled alongside Meggie and started talking to her. Misery loves company and I was elated for a few minutes that she was having to go through what I was going through.

Finally we passed the dolphin dock and my English deficient English teacher let his hooks out and left. But the moto driver continued alongside Meggie until we reached our swimming area several hundred meters down the road. He asked if he could swim with us and then declined saying he didn’t have his swimming suit.

By this time a young boy had come down to see us on the dirt bank, introducing himself as Suknow and saying he wanted to practice his English as expected. He had been taking English classes for about two years now, but his comprehension and articulation were folds above the “English teacher” earlier. He was full of information on the area and was pleasant to talk with, never pushing stupid personal questions like so many others.

The three of us crossed the first finger of water waist deep and we left the backpack on the other side and went swimming in the cool, clear waters. Meggie pointed out that the sand looked like it was full of gold specs and sure enough it did. Suknow however said it wasn’t and I would imagine that the area would have been raped decades ago if it truly were gold. We decided to take some back with us at the end of the day, but due to my poor short term memory, our get rich quick idea was doomed to failure.

On the way out I was pretty tired and Meggie quickly pulled ahead of me. I handed a couple of dollars to Suknow for his English lessons and tried to catch up to no avail. It then occurred to me that I might have a flat and this was confirmed by multiple people I passed. But by this time Meggie was out of sight and I hadn’t passed a repair shop yet, so I pedaled on, hoping it wouldn’t exacerbate the problem.

It finally got too hard to pedal and I started to walk. As it turned out, the second house I came to a minute later was a moto and bicycle repair shop. Two middle aged men were working on a moto while a woman and a three toothed grandfather watched. Shortly the moto was on its way and I told them my problem. The younger of the men started to work on my bicycle while I texted Meggie my situation.

The younger man then asked me where I was from and I told them Alaska, but born in Battambang. This was like a revelation to him and he exclaimed that it now made sense why I didn’t speak exactly clearly. The conversation with him and the hospitable grandfather was rather pleasant and really made my day. About fifteen minutes later I was on the road again.

About five minutes down the road I met up with Meggie coming the other direction with a quizzical expression. “Obviously you didn’t get my message” I said and about sixty seconds later her phone rang with it. She had made it half way back to town before realizing I was missing and turning around.

Early the next morning we caught the fast bus back to Phnom Penh. This one was supposed to take six hours because it would follow the dirt road along the river instead of taking the circuitous, but paved route around. The road was actually in good shape with only short sections out of whack and we made it to Phnom Penh in about five hours. While it wasn’t all that pleasant of a ride in the older bus, it made up for it in the time saved.

Kratie is a very pleasant place. The water there is fairly clean and the air definitely so. I didn’t realize that later part until getting off the bus and being hit with wafts of raw sewage that is so common in Phnom Penh. And I had thought all water in this country was either mud brown or dirty green until now. It is also a fairly low stress place, Kratie, with not a single person coming up to me to sell books or begging and not a single moto taxi driver yelling out “moto” as I pass by. My only complaint would be in the very poor quality of mixed drinks. I actually had to show the bar tender how to put salt on the lip of margarita glasses and he exclaimed that he had never seen that done before.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Khmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.