The Rare Irrawaddy Dolphins

11/11/09
We started the day a bit slow in Kratie, partly due to being tired, but mostly due to how incredibly hot it was. Kratie is a nice little town that sits along the mighty mekong river. We hit up the market for some fruit and fresh baguettes. Thank you French!! Laos and cambodia (and hopefully vietnam) have good bread, the only place in asia, due to the heavy french influence. We then rented some motor bikes and headed into the countryside along the mekong. Cambodia life here is very 3rd world, and as elsewhere in cambodia, dominated by the hammock, the wheelbarrow, the tuk tuk seat, or whatever other device can be used for sleeping away the hot days. We have figured the cambodians have a life similar to the cat, sleeping most of the day and night.

Our first stop was along the river where we roused a boatmen from a nap to take us to look for the extremely endangered Mekong Irrawaddy Dolphin. There is apparently only 50 or so of these noseless freshwater dolphins in the mekong, but they stick to certain areas and are thus still easy to find in this protected zone. So we ended up getting to see quite a few. At least 10 from the boat and 3 from shore. We watched them swim around hunting for fish for about an hour before heading back to shore to take a nap under the shade. We continued on up the river for several more miles, stopping for some 5 cent icecream cones and some ice fruit desert (sorta similar to the ABC in malaysia) to try and stay somewhat cool. We also tried to get some food, which we eventually did, but was extremely difficult b/c we still haven't learned how to ask for food or prices in Khmer language and the people just in general weren't too excited to sell us some food (very untypical asian) as I think it would mean getting up from the hammock.

On the way back to Kratie, we took a dirt road to some village and along the way, some people sweating the in rice fields invited us with a hand motion to come help them. So we worked a bit with their special tool, harvesting their rice with them.

We're just hanging out the morning today waiting for the bus from phnom penh that will take us to the laos border and that is supposed to be also delivering us our passports with our laos visas. So if all goes well, we'll be in Laos tonight.
This part of cambodia, aside from the heat, is much nicer though b/c people are back to being more friendly (though a cautious friendly) and less of trying to sell you things (for 1 dolla). Tourism isn't so big here like it is in the other 3 cambodian places we've been. And I like the much more relaxed feel. This definitely isn't so much scambodia as cambodia. Though of course hard bargaining is still a necessity.