I have never been in a country that was as dusty as Cambodia! I mean, it looks like Mars! Even pedestrians create small red dust devils and every car and every moto stirs up a minor or major dust storm. Of course, the advantage of this is, that the ground is quite soft - something we learned to appreciate when we crashed with our motorbike.

There really isn't much to see in Stung Treng, so after a night in the small, cheap (2 USD/night) but rather shitty "Riverside Hotel" - ants were busy eating a cockroach when we came into our room and there was the faint smell of something rotting in the air - we decided to go to Ban Lung, about four hours east of Stung Treng.

I had already heard about this place in Laos and from what we read in the guidebook it felt like a good place to go as well. So Jacqui and me bought two tickets, six USD each, for one of the four front seats in a pickup to Ban Lung the next morning. This turned out to be a good idea since in Cambodia, unlike in Myanmar and Laos, pickups are really just that: Pickups. So in the back you sit in the open, totally unprotected from all the dust, dirt and whatever might fly your way.

The only problem was that the guy who had sold us our tickets at "Richi's Restaurant" had not given the money we had given him to the driver, who understandably was quite upset about this. And of course we said that we would not pay again since we already had paid. Actually we were quite fortunate since apparently the drivers normally collect the money at the end of the trip and not in the beginning. And in Ban Lung our chances of sorting everything out would have been far worse. Fortunately the driver decided that it really was his and not our problem, so he tried to solve it. This involved taking our tickets, catching someone from Richi's (where the gut who had sold us the tickets couldn't be found) a lot of discussions and even a police report until someone handed some money over to the driver. All this took only one hour so we really couldn't complain.

On the way to Ban Lung something really weird happened: We stopped at some point to drop a girl off the back of the pickup. And the moment we stopped an oncoming car also stopped on the spot and reversed for a few meters. Then a rifle came out of the side window, someone shot into the air and then the car accelerated again and drove past us. It was really weird.

The road to Ban Lung was quite o.k., btw.. O.k., for Cambodia I mean. It's full of potholes but they are smaller then cars so there was never any real danger of being eaten by them.

In Ban Lung we looked at a few guesthouses before we checked into the "Mountain View Guesthouse" where we got a really nice room for three dollars. They also advertised "free laundry" which turned out to mean one dollar. But by that point that didn't really surprise me because we found that a lot of signs in Cambodia seem to have been put up to please tourists rather then actually indicated an existing service. Examples being: "We buy and sell books" or "We cash traveler cheques".

One of the main attractions near Ban Lung is a lake that has formed in a volcanic crater. And I'm telling you: In the middle of all this dust it is like an oasis! We went there almost immediately after we had unpacked and I just never wanted to leave again. The water is clear and looks clean, there are trees, grass and loads of other vegetation and it's simply beautiful.

What's a bit funny is that you cannot walk into the lake. You jump. Since it's a crater it does not get slowly deeper: At the shallowest part it's 50 meters, in the middle it's 80 meters deep.

On our second day in Ban Lung we couldn't really make our minds up, what to do. I would have liked to see the Gem Mines but Jacqui couldn't really be bothered and by the time we had woken up met with some other people for breakfast, had breakfast etc. it already was lunchtime so it was too late anyhow. So instead we decided to hire two scooters - one for Jacqui and me and one for two Kiwis we had met the day before - and drive to a nearby waterfall.

Actually that probably wasn't such a smart idea since we didn't have any experience with Cambodian roads. And besides, Jacqui is not very good at sitting on the back of a bike. I might have been o.k. if I had driven a proper dirt bike but without knowledge of the roads the inevitable happened: We crashed. All of us.

For most of the way I simply stuck to following locals through the crater landscape that is called "road" here. I mean, it's not like they stick to their part of the road or anything. It's more like they follow an invisible way that zigzags over the dirt and is on the left side of the road as often as on the right side bringing you pretty close to oncoming vehicles.

Unfortunately though we eventually came to a crossing where I didn't have any locals in front of me so I just had to guess. And of course I tried to maneuver the right side of the road - big mistake. That part of the road was covered in loose dust that must have been at least 20 centimeters high. You couldn't see the layout of the ground properly and after about a hundred or so meters I lost traction and we crashed. Fortunately the dust was so soft that we hardly felt anything. Seriously. It was more like falling on a very soft mattress then anything else. I felt no impact whatsoever and neither did Jacqui. It was very fluffy dust so nothing happened and we all had a good laugh. Especially Matt and Megan who saw us emerge from a dust cloud (and who had yet to crashed themselves), covered in red dust from head to toe. I swear: I've never been so dirty in my whole life!

After we went to the waterfall (that was not so special after all) we went back to the lake where I jumped in, fully dressed, in the vain hope that this would get rid of the dust. But no, while it probably did wash a kilo or two of dust from my clothes - there was a red mud-trail in the water behind me - my clothes looked just as bad when I got out as they did when I got in. And beating, wringing and rinsing them didn't really seem to make any changes, either. But my god - did that water feel good!

So, basically we had made the whole way from Stung Treng to Ban Lung just to swim in a lake - which is really a bit ridiculous. But we had a good time and we had a great group of people. There were simply so many nice and genuinely friendly travelers there. It really made it a bit hard to leave. I also met Petra and Steven again - goes to show how far you manage to get off the beaten path: i.e. not at all.