Hello from Kratie

What to say???

Our adventure to Ratanakiri began with a 12 hour bus ride that was bumpier than the rocky mountains. We got to Ratanakiri around 8pm and we were exhausted. The next day, we started by renting bicycles and driving around the town-which, by the way, is in the middle of the jungle approximately 70 km from the Vietnam border. For this segment of the trip, we left without Arn and Sey Ma since. Arn was sick so we brought two Cambodian Living Arts students Veasna and Nisa with us. They are awesome!!! The bikes were fun!!! Later part of the gang took off to the Yeak Loam volcanic lake. James and myself had to stay behind, since we were not feeling good. Although, we are glad we didn't go, because on the way back two of the bikes got flat tires in the middle of a rain storm and had to walk back at least 3 km. It was a wet night, we also lost power!!! The next day is when the adventure started, we woke up and headed to breakfest. As we were trying to plan our day out we ran into a man by the name of Sitha Hun or builds schools out in the villages for the kids. Each school holds at least 150 kids in only three classrooms. Sitha told us he would bring us out their but it was a two hour off roading expedition. While we were on the trail thr fist truck got stuck in one of the wet rice paths. So all 15 of us had to pile into one small tacoma for the other 3 km. It wasn't too pleasent. When we were on our way back the second got got stuck in the same rice feild. So we attempted several times to push it out, but all we were getting were dirty muddy clothes and we were in the dirtiest water ever!!! We soon realized we were stuck in the jungle. So we split for help!!! Mr. Riege, James, Nisa, and myself ventured out on a 5 km walk at least to get help. It wasn't too bad until we caused a moto accident!!! Nisa was lucky enough to get a ride to the village, as Mr. Riege James and I were walking we saw this big 4x4 Army looking viechle coming our way. It looked like it came from Vetnam... What an adventure that ride was. Getting the thing to the cars was tricky manouver since we needed a couple of trees to pull us out from the mud!!! This viechle was tough!!! We finally made it home after 7:30pm and realized what was suppose to be a 4-5 hour adventure turned into a day adventure... But it was a great experience. The next day we just hung out we went to some music and weaving villages and went back to the lake to swim. Ratanakiri was a cool experience I hope the trip next year can make it back. The one thing we didn't get too see was the coffee plantation. Fast fowarding to today Jake and I learned part of the Monkey Dance which is a lot of fun and then we drove off too Kratie which is about 5 hours NE of Phnom Penh. We came here to hopefully go out on the Mekong river and find the endangered dolphin called the Irrawaddy Dolphin. Hope we can see some!!! Other then that we are leaving tomorrow back to Phnom Penh for our final days. We are going to see Danny, Arn, Sey Ma, Charlie, for the last time. We hope to go to the Russian Market and take a cooking class!!! Don't worry four more days we are home. What a trip this has been!!!

Gary