On the way to Kratie (a resonably bumpy drive plus a river crossing) we stopped at a random Temple/Monastery and the locals were preparing a meal for their monks. Everyone delights in visitors and the kids especially are curious of strangers. They are ALL fascinated by the cameras and love to see their photos – it is absolutely guaranteed to crack anyone up with a smile.
Kratie (pronounced kra-chey) is a small town on the Mekong River in northeastern Cambodia. Kartie is relatively remote and not heavily touristed, but it’s major claim to fame are the River Dolphins. There are though the be fewer than 85 Irrawaddy River Dolphin remaining in the Mekong (and there was a report of one caught in a net and dying the week before we arrived).
The best spot to watch the dolphins is Kampi village, 15 km north from Kratie, where you can rent a boat for a short trip out to where they are feeding. The river dolphins, don’t generally approach boats or show curiosity towards tourist boats at all. Being towards the end of the wet season, at the moment the Mekong is fairly wide, so we had a bit of a travel up river to find the dolphins. It is a bit hard to judge how many there were but we estimated about a dozen coming and going – presumably feeding off their favourite food on the bottom.
Not really a great photo opportunity and the water is too murky to even see them until they surface, but it was a nice couple of hours on the water, and a little scary to realise that there are so few of these animals left alive.
On returning to the shore we were entertained by the local kids climbing and jumping off the docks.
On the afternoon we took a quick ferry ride across to Koh Trong Island. I was too knackered to wander far (which was just as well as the concrete path quickly turned to mud), so stayed and chatted to the locals and did some timelapse shots of the storm.
