cydonian

with three-star beach resorts that exhude all the ambience of a 1970’s Bollywood paradise, added with some great food and great music. Alas, I was only transitting overnight through Lanka, and not quite travelling to the place.

Mainland Europe’s loneliest canton, it has its own brand of cheese, and has given voting rights to women as recently as 1990.

is a place you won’t be interested in unless you fancy maps. The tourist operators call it the ‘Golden Triangle’, it’s a tiny speck on the Mekong coastline where Thailand’s magnificient north-south highway lies next to a Burmese casino, which in turn, is on the other side of vast Laotian forests.

Golden Triangle… four languages, three countries, one river.

Imagine the Wild West tamed by the French, but filled with smiling Cambodians, and you begin to picture Kratchie. The town ends after exactly three blocks of disused buildings stretching for about a kilometre or so along the Mekong river.

If you’re a tourist, you’re likely to visit Kratchie for exactly three reasons:- a) you’re on your way to Strung Treng, and then to the Laos border, b) you’ve just read about Kratchie here and can’t wait to get there, or c) you’re there to see the freshwater dolphins at Kampi. The dolphins would, in my opinion, completely validate the USD6 bus ticket and the bumpy six hour bus-ride to the place from Phnom Penh; this is as close as it gets to watching these majestic aquatic giants in their natural habitat.

Personally, I’d recommend Kratchie for ( c), or perhaps (a), therefore making (b) a reality.

so tame that it doesn’t even figure on most tourist maps of Cambodia.

Skoun is interesting, though, for two reasons. First, it’s at Cambodia’s cross-roads; that’s where the western highway from Siem Reap, meets the eastern highway from Kampong Glam before heading south to Phnom Penh.

The second reason, is for the food. Take a good look at the accompanying picture here; that’s staple food for hungry travellers stopping by the town on their way to Kampong Glam or Siem Reap, and you can get those for a very cheap rate if you haggle enough.

Yup, that’s right.They eat spiders out there in Skoun. Black, eight-legged, hairy spiders.

With China and Laos looking on.

Fun place, really, shops spout notices in four languages, Burmese, Thai, Chinese and English.