The Mighty Mekong

So we took a long, long drive back up to the northern part of the country to stop in Kratie (pronounced kra-CHEH, with a slightly rolled 'r'). The town is located right along the Mekong River, but otherwise it's... not particularly impressive. We arrived as it was getting dark and I thought the town seemed totally sketchy. It improves in daylight, but anyway, that is not the point of Kratie. There isn't a ton to do in the town, and all of the tourists are there primarily for the same experience--to try to spot the dwindling population of Irrawaddy dolphins. They're little and gray with flat noses and I was really anxious to see them, since I knew only 70-90 live in the Mekong and spotting them would be completely up to chance. Our hotel set us up with an excellent tuktuk driver, Soda, who happened to also be an English and French teacher at a local school. And between the hotel owner and Soda, we knew what time and where would give us the best chance for successful dolphin-spotting.

We ran into a French couple who didn't really have any luck. Us? We saw one within a minute of getting on the boat. There were a good 5 or 6 active dolphins all over the place, chasing jumping fish and coming up for air a bunch. No jumping out of the water, but we saw plenty of tops of heads and fins and backs. It turns out taking pictures of dolphins from a middle distance is kinda tricky? But we enjoyed seeing them with our eyes and had a fun time on a boat and driving through the nearby villages. Sorry I can't fully share the experience with photographs.

The view from our boat, and the little ripple in the background is a dolphin dipping back into the water.

O HAI! I didn't take this picture, but I wanted to give you an idea. Dolphins without foreheads look like happy aliens, don't they?

Soda! A little action-shot from our tuktuk ride. The hut on the right is a restaurant, I believe.

Then we returned to our hotel, grabbed our stuff, and got on another boat! This time it was a short trip across the water to a small island where there are no cars. We stayed at a cool resort with private mini-villas on stilts, but even there, the only electricity supply was from a generator they turned on at 6pm. Scott told me he'd heard that the island in a lot of ways gives you an idea of what most of Cambodia must have looked like before it really developed, and that was pretty believable.

Our hut is on the far left.

We went on a short tuktuk ride around some narrow dirt roads. Most people move around on small minibikes or on wagons pulled by mini-horses or cows, so whenever they hear the sound of a motor, the children often line up by the road to see what and who is coming. They stare shyly or curiously, or they smile and wave, and depending on where they live and what the education is like, a lot of them will say "hello" or "bye-bye." They also call us French, because Khmer doesn't really use a different word for foreigner.

We jumped off at a nice spot to watch the sunset, but we soon became fidgety and Scott was frustrated with me for suggesting that he might be misunderstood if he jumps up and tries to join a man loading his wagon with bamboo branches, so we abandoned the original plan and started to walk back early. We passed a pagoda and its outbuildings, fully open and run by some young monks. The resort owner had told us we could have a look around, but we didn't want to barge in and stare at monks going about their lives, but a very young monk waved us inside the gate as we walked by, and walked us up to the pagoda, silently showed us to remove our shoes, and the three of us rolled out a mat and knelt before a giant Buddha together. Then he and his other young friend eagerly pointed out a big flock of birds flying by, which struck me, that out here in this incredibly peaceful and quiet location, a mass of birds would be a fascination for a 10 year old boy. We've seen a lot of small villages on this trip, and a lot of farmland and fishing villages (about 80% of people here are farmers), but this island is a whole other kind of place. You can feel your heart rate slowing here. At night it's so quiet you feel like you're alone. Well, except for the loud American cycling tour that was also staying at our resort.

My new friends. They don't hate me, we just had to be careful not to touch.

Also, for the record, I should mention that somewhere in the Kampot days I slowly started developing a cold of sorts. It was a throat tickle that developed into some runny nose + sneezing. On the trek up to Kratie, it turned into some sinus pressure so I ached in my face and behind my eyes. Nothing detrimental to plans, but there's a certain sort of evil in pairing the discomfort of pounding sun and constant layers of sticky sunscreen with a head cold. That's just too cruel.