Another border crossing that took almost a full day :) It is maybe possible to travel by local transport but it might take even longer than the "easy" option we have chosen. We bought a ticket with our guesthouse for $13 each (after negotiations) to Don Det in Laos (an island in the "4000 Islands" region). The ticket included 3 mini-van trips and a boat trip: mini-van from Kratie to Stung Treng, mini-van from Stung Treng to Laos border (with a stop at the Cambodian border), mini-van from Laos border to Ban Nakasang and a boat trip to Don Det from Ban Nakasang.
The mini-van was supposed to leave Kratie at 8am but after picking up all the tourists the driver went to the market and waited an hour to try (unsuccessfully!) to get more passengers! We finally left at around 9am and we arrived 1h30 later in Stung Treng. The mini-van dropped us at a guesthouse where we had to wait 2h before catching the ferry (included in our ticket) to get to another mini-van waiting for us on the other side of the Mekong. A bridge has been built so in the future the mini-vans should depart from Stung Treng, but so far this bridge is not yet in use...We were glad that we did not decide to stay in Stung Treng instead of Kratie as the town in not that nice. New guesthouses are opening as the number of tourists stopping in Stung Treng on their way to Laos has increased a lot since a road has been built a few years ago, however the options to eat and have a drink are very limited. When we finally went to the ferry, a small wooden boat, we again had to wait for it to fill in...and on the other side we also had to wait as our mini-van had a flat tyre! A Cambodian girl traveling with us told us that there are two borders to enter Laos, the old one in the middle of the woods that is also used by travelers going to Laos by boat and a new one on the main road. She asked the driver to go through the new border but as we were traveling with a monk who wanted to go to a village next to the old border, we all had to go to the old border. After 2h driving on a narrow and bumpy unsealed road through the forest we finally arrived at the Cambodian border of Dong Kralor.
In a small wooden building there is an empty desk and a few chairs around a long table. It took the custom officer a few minutes to go and get his suitcase with all the stamps and then he started looking at Gosia's passport, checking carefully each page. He finally stamped her passport and while he handed it back to her asked "you pay me a dollar?" Gosia asked "What for?" and he said it was an "administration fee". We replied to him that we knew there is no administration fee to pay to get a stamp out of Cambodia, he was not happy but gave up quite easily.
It turned out to be a very different story at the Laos border of Veunkham, a few kilometers away. The custom officer was in an even smaller wooden shelter, he had all his stamps ready but he made it very clear that he would not stamp our passport unless we pay the "$1 administration fee". We tried to complain but the guy did not want to listen. After we paid "the fee" everything went fine, we got our passports stamped and we boarded the mini-van waiting to take us to Ban Nakasang. We took a picture of the guy and will do an official complain in Vientiane. If all travellers do the same this corruption one day might end. After a 30min trip we arrived in Ban Nakasang where we caught a boat to Don Det. We finally reached Don Det around 4.30pm, 8h30 after being picked up at our guesthouse in Kratie! Without all the waiting time between the mini-vans this trip could have been much shorter....but this is the way things are in Cambodia and Laos!
We did not want to stay in the small village North of Don Det where the boat dropped us, we wanted to go to nicer bungalows advised in our guide book that were further South. We decided to walk as we did not want to pay for the boat but we soon realised that those places were quite far. After a long half an hour walk carrying our backpacks we arrived at the bungalows... but they were all full! We kept walking and ended up checking in Santiphab guesthouse next to the bridge that links Don Det to Don Khone. We arrived by night after more than an hour walk, which is a long time when carrying heavy backpacks (!), and we could not be bothered to go somewhere else, however we would not recommend this place, we don't know why it is listed in our guide book. The people are not that nice and the bungalows and bathrooms are not so clean. We were missing a lot our nice room in Kratie as we were unpacking our bags at the light of our torch....there is no electricity in the cheap bungalows in Don Det! In the more expensive one there is electricity but only from 6pm to 10pm.
