Kratie

After recovering from our journey, and having a lovely dinner at our hotel (it runs a hospitality training scheme for local kids, and works towards elimination of poverty and environmental degradation), we started to get excited about the next day. Why? Dolphins! This is the last place in the world where you can still find freshwater dolphins, a species called Mekong dolphins. They have been historically known as Irrawaddy dolphins, but given that they haven't been seen for many years in the Irrawaddy river, Mekong dolphin is a much better fit. They used to be found all through the river system, but encroachment by humans and damming of the river have reduced the population to a relatively short stretch of the river around Kratie. There are something like 130 left. 

The next day we set out for a kayaking and bike riding day. We still feel scarred by a poor experience viewing dolphins in Bali, where scores of small motorboats aggressively chased pods of dolphins in the ocean. It seemed like kayaking was a much gentler way of going about our business. The tour started with a briefing, which had us slightly worried - the current in the river is quite strong at the end of the rainy season, and it looked like paddling could be tricky. There was also the obligatory disclaimer about no guarantees - spoilt by being told straight afterwards that they've seen dolphins every time they've gone out for the last 8 years. We loaded ourselves into the back of the truck with the kayaks (!) and headed off to the launch point.

Spoiler alert - we had no interest in offering one of our phones to the Mekong river gods, and paddling in the current was not bad, but not completely stress free, and the end result was no photos. However, we took plenty of photos in our brains! The river is wide and we had to paddle more than 1km across to get to the deep pools where the dolphins live. Then it was a matter of slowly going downstream until we found them. When we did, it was spectacular. We probably saw 20 or so, maybe more and they moved up and down the river around where we were located. We paddled up and down after them. We got quite close several times and had a fantastic time of it, with the kayaking part of the day going seriously overtime as a result. There were 3 couples on the trip and we were the oldest by at least 20 years. We took quite pleasure in being the first ones back to the disembarking point...

After lunch, it was on to a bike ride around Koh Trong island - which is a farming community, with a couple of floating villages as well. The ride across the river was in a tiny little wooden ferry which seemed to be on its last legs, and had quite a lot of water in the bottom (being pumped out by the world's loudest diesel bilge pump. We managed to make it across safely, although it felt like a close run thing. 

The floating villages next to the island are populated by Vietnamese fishermen, who are predominantly Muslim, and do not yet have permanent residency rights in Cambodia. It was interesting to hear the afternoon prayers being broadcast as we cycled around. Apparently the island is famous for the flavour of its pomelos, which we got to sample. We also saw a colony of fruit bats and a very big old tree which is worshipped by the locals. James also collected half a dozen high fives from the local kids. Thankfully, the ride back across to Kratie was on the usual ferry, which was considerably more seaworthy (riverworthy?) than our ride over. 

We finished the day with a drink watching the sunset over the river, followed by another lovely meal at our hotel. All-in-all, Kratie was an entirely worthwhile experience.