The boonies

The bus to ratanakari took about 11 hours but we finally made it and found a decent guest house. As they were showing us the different options of rooms, we saw a mattress under the stairs and asked how much that was a night. He thought we were joking, and said $1. We were serious....

Haha just kidding. they found us a much better place.

After a good night's sleep, we took a walk outside and fortune smiled upon us. We found an old lady selling fried bananas. You might not know, but we have a strong history with this particular delicacy. It was this fruit that inspired the top charted music video Cek Cian  as missionaries.

We heard about some pretty cool things to see at this town out in the middle of nowhere. So we rented some motos again and headed off to the three waterfalls that were pretty close together. We also couldn't pass up a couple good scenery shots and moto shots. 

When we came to the first one, we saw some people leaving and they were all dry. We got a little disappointed because we wanted to swim. But we weren't too disappointed when we realized it was a 30 meter high waterfall. We also couldn't resist climbing down into it. 

Pretty big huh?

Being an idiot

trying to find my way back up

The next too waterfalls weren't nearly as cool but still worth the trip. One of them even had a cool wooden bridge to cross. Apparently most people don't swim, but we didn't care.

The Moto ride rivaled the waterfalls because the scenery was absolutely gorgeous.
Here we set the camera on a limb of a tree and took 5 quick shots. As you can see our demeanor changed quickly over those 5 seconds.

This one's my favorite. the helmet was falling over my eyes. I look like a little boy

We also couldn't help having a little fun on the motos. Ok so this video is super dumb. I didn't have time to think of anything to say so if you didn't think i was dumb before, you will now.

After the a quick lunch, we went to this pristine lake which was supposedly the result of a meteor. It was surrounded by a dense forest and these pictures do absolutely no justice. It was about 2.5km around and was very deep but was so quite and calm. Kory and I took a couple swims out to not quite half way. I wish I could explain how beautiful it was but I can't. It was sure nice to swim in though.

We had been there about a while when a group of kids showed up. They were of course surprised that we spoke khmae and then invited us to eat with them. This is when things got funny. I think every 30 seconds someone would do a toast and we would all put our cans of soda together. I lost it so many times. We could not keep straight faces. Kory especially lost it when I initiated the toast. Cambodian culture is soo funny and it makes it even funnier when you go along with it and initiate when you have another American with you who knows you're just messing around.

Afterwards we played a game of tag in the water. But it quickly became a game of counting to make sure we had the same number of people we started with. They were not the best swimmers. Most of them could only doggy paddle and would hang close to the dock. I was constantly  asking Kory "How many did you count?" "6" "ok good me too". and then proceed to play. Finally we headed back to town but got caught in the rain so we pulled of and sought refuge under a nearby tree, not wanting our bags to get wet which contained our money and passports. On the bright side though it made the next trip quite interesting, dirt+water=mud, mud+moto=fun/not fun, We somehow managed to get up and down some pretty muddy hills and came to the top of mountain with a beautiful view.

Tomorrow off to Siem Reap