Ban Lung

After leaving Phenom Penh I wanted to head to Ban Lung, however that is a 12 hour journey (at least) if done in one go so I stopped off at Kratie to spend one night. Kratie is a small town located on the banks of the Mekong river and there isn't very much to do here, I had originally planned on spending 2 nights here but upon arriving my guesthouse owner convinced me to leave the next day. As a result I spent the night and the following morning in Kratie and saw the freshwater dolphins that live in the Mekong river. The short trip out to see the dolphins was quite good as we got to take a boat out into the middle of the river for about an hour and watch as the dolphins came up for air all around us while we sat there. I lost count of the number of dolphins that I saw surfacing, usually we could only see the fin but sometimes we could see the head, with some of them as close as 5 meters from the boat. After watching the dolphins for about an hour we headed back into Kratie where I caught a bus that would take me the rest of the way to Ban Lung.

My first impression of Ban Lung when I stepped off the bus was that it had to be the dustiest town in the world, only 1 small section of road was paved and everywhere seemed to be coated in a layer of red dust. Ban Lung is a nice small town that certainly isn't very touristy as there are only a few guesthouses, all restaurants are attached to the guesthouses and only 1 small and slow internet cafe. The first day there I rented a bike and toured around the town in the morning and then headed out to a nearby crater lake to spend the afternoon. The lake is extremely beautiful with crystal clear water that is the perfect temperature: pretty warm but still nice and refreshing from the hot sun. The lake is almost a perfect circle too which is why people call it a crater lake and surrounding the lake is a beautiful green forest.

The second day in Ban Lung I took a motor bike tour to most of the nearby waterfalls. Most of the waterfalls weren't that impressive and only consisted of a small dribble of water falling over the rocks, my guide assured me that during the wet season they were really nice and quite big though. There was one waterfall though, actually it was a series of 7 short drops of about 5-10 feet each, that contained lots of water and we were able to wade around through it and had a great time. The day was really enjoyable aside from the unpaved roads which left us absolutely covered in dust from head to toe.

On my final day in Ban Lung I spent most of the relaxing in my guesthouse which had a nice view of the lake in Ban Lung and in the afternoon I went out to the crater lake.

After leaving Ban Lung I headed for Kampot, unfortunately there wasn't a direct way to get there from Ban Lung so I had to overnight in Kampong Cham. Kampong Cham was a nice little city but with absolutely nothing to do here so I spent a short night here relaxing near the Mekong river before boarding a bus to Kampot (the bus journey where I had my camera stolen).