Crater Lakes and Waterfalls

After a 14 hour bus journey from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, we’re now up in the much more rural province of Ratanakiri. Our journey up to the north east of the country was only supposed to take 10 hours, but I guess after all the train and bus journeys we’ve been on since we started the trip, a breakdown was inevitable sooner or later. To make up for our good fortune so far, our bus broke down twice. The first time was just outside of Phnom Penh, and our driving team (which consisted of three guys barely in their 20s) decided that the best way to fix this poor excuse for an air conditioned coach was long periods of intense staring into the engine, punctuated by the occasional prod or tinker. Remarkably, after 40 minutes of this, the bus came back to life and we all piled back on.


Of course, we then stopped every 20 minutes to squeeze on extra passengers, who sat on plastic chairs in the aisle. By the time we reached Ratanakiri, the tarmac road had been substituted for an endless dirt track, which we bumped along for four hours before breaking down again at the top of a steep slope just short of our destination, the town of Ban Lung. This time, no amount of prodding or flashing of torches under the vehicle could revive the vehicle, and we had to transfer to a replacement bus instead, finally arriving into town at 10pm.

The reason we’d made this detour to the north was because of the Lonely Planet’s description of swimming under waterfalls and in beautiful lakes One of these lakes, Boeng Yeak Lom, was just 5km our hotel and, following my newfound cycling abilities, we hired bicycles for the day ($1 each) and set off. It’d been a few days since I’d last cycled, and it was my first time on an actual road with other moving vehicles. Luckily Ban Lung doesn’t get very busy and there weren’t many drivers on the road so, despite a wobbly start, we managed the journey there with me falling off only once (not into any traffic and with no injuries, don’t worry).

The lake was beautiful. It’s also known as the Crater Lake because it’s a perfect circle, and it’s likely to have been created by a meteor thousands of years ago. It’s around 850m in circumference, and rumoured to be 85m deep in the very centre. We didn’t waste any time jumping in – the water was clear and cool, and there was hardly anyone else there save a couple of local families. We spent the rest of the day swimming, diving, eating a simple bread and jam lunch, walking through the foresty bits around the lake (Indiana & Jones style, of course) and lazing about, before hopping back onto our bikes for the ride home. An exhausting but brilliant day.


Ratanakiri’s waterfalls are a little further away so the following day we decided to take it up a notch and hire a motorbike instead. This is Karl trying to impress some local kids on the motorbike (although they were more interested in his watch), while I demonstrate how to look stupid in a helmet.

We drove along at a leisurely speed to four very different waterfalls. Chaong Waterfall is more like a really powerful shower, with a large spout of water gushing over a rockface.

Ka Tieng and Ka Chang were more what you might expect from a waterfall, with a rocky backdrop and lots of greenery. We swam through the pools to try and get behind the falls but the water was too powerful to get very close.

Finally, O’Seng Eal was more a series of mini-waterfalls, and one of my favourites because you could just sit on the rocks underneath and get absolutely drenched, as I demonstrate here.


Seriously, after a long bike journey in the midday heat, this was absolute bliss.

On the way back, we stopped off at a little food cart selling baguettes with some mystery meat and vegetables, which were surprisingly delicious. I managed to take this picture of Karl with his baguette just as he was getting shot in the arm by a cheeky four-year-old boy armed with a potato gun, who then scurried away!