Markets in Krong Stung Treng

After a restless night due to a very firm mattress and David waking every 10 minutes to check there were no cockroaches crawling over us, we were then woken by the local cockerel at 5am which we tried to snooze through until 5:45. Then up and a quick breakfast before our next bus ride. We were picked up by the minibus from our hotel and after detouring around to fill the bus we headed north to Stung Treng. It took about 3.5 hours and a lot of bumpy road to arrive at this market town. Again, we decided to walk to our next guesthouse but after realising we weren't quite sure where it was we popped into the "Four Rivers Hotel" for directions. Here we were directed back to Kratie as the Le Tonlé had moved (as we had stayed there last night). We therefore took the opportunity to stay in an actual hotel for the next two nights. This hotel looks over the Mekong and Sekong rivers (not sure about the other 2) and even has a sky bar.
We dropped our bags and headed into town in the rain (with an umbrella, thanks to our hotel!) to find lunch. There were not many restaurants around so we choose a busy local place which only gave us the English options of fried noodles or rice; we ordered one of each. The food was okay, but it just seemed a shame that the locals had a wider choice, that we were only able to peek at as it went past. We finished up lunch and had a walk through the large market before heading back for a rest at the hotel. On our way we realised we left our water bottle in the restaurant so had to make a detour to go and get it, which led us through the back street of town (past a whole load of rubbish) and through another market. We were very warm by the time we got back, but luckily the rain had stopped.
In the evening, after David had a quick nap, we went up to the sky bar. We were the only ones to there and after they told us they didn't have mint for a mojito nor ice for any other cocktail we walked back into town for dinner. We had been recommended a place called Ponika's palace by the guy in Kratie. They do a mix of local, Indian and western food. Kerry went for the Indian set meal while David went for sweet and sour. The food was great, the service lacking and the power almost non-existent - the constant power-cuts left us feeling like we were eating in one of the 'dinner in the dark' restaurants.Read more