Field Trip - Part Two

Friday afternoon in Kratie

So we are in Kratie for a couple of days, having arrived by boat from K. Cham.
We have our meeting with the Provincial Office early afternoon and then my Khmer colleagues insist that I go and see the dolphin. an excellent idea after a few days of fairly solid travelling. The vice chief of the local office says that he will go with us, so he gets his moto. As there are 3 of us, he calls two of his friends to drive me and my other colleague – luxury 3 motos between 6 people !

His friends turn up and they turn out to be the vice-chief of Kratie tourist police and the chief of Kratie Military police!?!

As motodope drivers go, you can not get much better !

I go with the Chief of Military Police. A stocky Khmer who it seems speaks no English, as we approach his bike I am a little surprised, instead of the requisite Honda Dream, he has some customised 250 low-rider, complete with oversize forks, ape-hanger bars and a king~queen seat.

As I see the bike he looks at me and utters 4 of the 6 words in English he knows,

“I love Peter Fonda”

He then smiles and pull out his [fake?] Rayban’s…

mmm???

Being somewhat larger than the average Khmer I feel quite exposed perched high on the back of his seat, which in reality was designed for some petite girl to be sat side-saddle on. But we head off down the road.

Now, as anyone of you who has been to Kratie will testify, the 15Km of road from the town to the dolphin place are not the best bits of road in the country, even the bits that have tarmac are full of holes, strewn with gravel or just general full of high pitch and yaw undulations due the large trees and their roots by the roadside, so after a few Kilometres my arse is beginning to feel a bit numb – due also in part to the fact half of it is perched on the chrome plated rear light rather than the actual seat.

All the way along he is humming something to himself. After a few K’s I realise that he is humming ‘Born to be wild’

Then as a Daelim careens past us on the wrong side of the road, he lets out an almighty roar, shouting and screaming at the rider and he then opens the throttle up full giving chase - I should point out at this point that we are on the dirt road starch and the road has more holes than surface at this point – as we bounce along as fast as the bike is capable of going the guy on the Daelim puts his head down and desperately tries to get away, now this chase only lasted about 5 minutes – until the guy on the Daelim hits a pothole the that was actually bigger than his bike – but it was enough to scare the shit out of me. I am caked in mud, my spine feels as though it has fused and my arse is almost completely off the back of the bike.

Reaching the pothole we skid to a halt and for a second I think that we are going to drop the 2 feet down the hole to join him, but we swerve just enough to stop on the side of it instead.

In a flash the MP Chief is off his bike and dragging the guy out off the floor and out of the hole, giving him a few slaps around the head for good measure , just in case the fact that the guys bleeding scalp wound was not enough, at this point the others catch up with us. There is lots of fast talking in Khmer, the upshot of which is that my 2 Khmer colleagues get on the back of one bike and I get on the back of the tourist police bike, leaving the MP Chief on the scene with his perp [victim?]

We carry on riding in silence the 10 minutes out to the dock where you get a boat to go out to look for dolphins.

As we all pull up there and stop I can contain myself no longer.

“fuck fuck fuck what the fuck was that fuck fucking fuck about?”

I ask in a less than erudite manner.

After a little discussion / translation I get the full story. It seems that a couple of weeks ago the Kratie Military Police arrested 4 guys coming over the border from Laos with 400,000 tablets of some kind of amphetamine – yes, that is right, I said 400,000 !

They were all arrested and flung into jail. It seems that our guy on the Daelim was one of them, the Chief had no idea why or how he had got out and was now riding around, but it seemed that he took great exception to him being a freeman rather than languishing in a prison cell awaiting trial

“So He escaped from prison” I [naively?] ask, feeling a little better about the whole incident.

“Maybe” my colleagues say, “or maybe he pays some money to be let out”

Well, judging by the Chief’s reaction, I pity the poor sod who was bribed to let him out when the Chief gets hold of him…


Oh a good note, we then saw lots and lots of dolphins, including some very brave and curious baby dolphins who came right up to the boat :-)



Saturday night in Kratie.

Ate at the Mlob Dong restaurant. About 5 minutes moto away from the river – don’t ask me for more specific directions !

While we were waiting for a menu a waitress brought a dish of pickled ginger and garlic cloves, as well as a small plate of wind dried shredded beef – the beef was actually very tasty, although it was a little on the chewy side it was full of flavour and a refreshing change from the freshwater fish and rice we had been eating 3 times a day.

The owner came over and chatted for a while to the Chief of Fish, he obviously knew him well. Having run through what food we wanted the owner disappeared back behind the scenes, presumably to talk to the chef.

While we were waiting, more beef turned up and so did large amounts of Tiger beer and ice.

The first of the food arrived, venison steaks with onions and French fries !?!
Now I know that venison is illegal in Cambodia, but hey what can you do?

They were so tender it was like cutting through pate, soft, moist, so full of flavour – I was in gastronomic heaven. Even the oddness of eating chips with chop sticks could not detract from it.

Next, the whole deep fried cat fish arrived, not a giant Mekong cat fish [Pangasianodon gigas] but just a regular 18 incher !
It was covered in shredded ginger and soya beans – lovely!

Next the rabbit and lemongrass soup, again excellent, very rich, suspect the base for it was venison stock.

All the while we were eating my colleagues kept asking me if I liked this food – between shovelling great mouthfuls down, grinning like an idiot and swilling Tiger by the gallon I managed to say yes a lot !

Have to say, some of the best food that I have had in a long time.