Ban Lung

As soon as we got off the bus, we had decided that Ban Lung, like everything in existence, was a lot better then Kratie due to the fact that there was actually things to do. We arrived in the early evening and so found a hostel quickly before heading to Soup 63, a restaurant with two dishes, Grilled Beef and Beef Soup. The appeal is that you cook the dish yourself at the table so we quickly got our hands greasy and cooked our feast.

During the next two days, we rented bicycles and went around exploring the local area. The highlight was when we visited the Crater lake where we swam and lounged around with a combination of locals and tourists. A highlight is so often followed by a low point, so we we're not too surprised when the perfect weather we had enjoyed at the lake disappeared on the cycle home when the conditions we're so bad we had to stop off in a restaurant and enjoy a lengthy, and most importantly free, game of scrabble.

The real reason to visit Ban Lung is the national park and so for our final day in the area, and in fact Cambodia, we decided to book ourselves a jungle trek. We were picked up at about 8 am and to our delight discovered that there was two bikes between Alex, Tiffany and I so including drivers there was 5 people on two bikes, a very fun journey followed. We spent the following five or six hours trekking up hills, down hills through streams and ponds and dodging all the frightfully scary (well if your Tiffany anyway) insects. Occasionally we would stop off at a villagers house but they didnt seem overly pleased to see us. We all agreed that a trek is generally more exciting if there is a rewarding view or some fantastic minority village at the end which this trek lacked but it was a great experience none the less. That evening we were very knackered and so ventured out only to book our bus to Don Det in Laos before going to bed.

Tom