Dolphins in Kratie

The main draw of Kratie is the chance to see the endangered Irrawaddy Dolphins, so we hired a moped to go and find them. They seemed very relaxed about renting bikes here. "It's no problem not to have a helmet," he told us, "because you are foreign the police won't stop you". I wasn't convinced, but we decided just to drive very carefully instead of finding another shop where we might have been able to hire one. In Vietnam they had said to me "Just start in third gear because first and second will be too fast for you"; the implication being that foreigners are too stupid to start in such a "powerful" gear -- that in turn reminded me of Thailand where I was constantly told that the food would be too hot for me (just a farang).

It was nice to be on a bike again (and even nicer to have wind blowing through the hair), and we found the dolphin place without too much difficulty; there are wooden carved dolphins for about half-a-mile in either direction from the parking spot. We paid more money for the boat trip than the Lonely Planet says we would need to, but they seem to have suspended the free market and set up a new system where there is a fixed price which gets shared among the boatmen, instead of being able to haggle them down. It also said that some of the money is going towards protecting the dolphins too, so I can't complain. We didn't have to wait long for the dolphins; almost as soon as the boat pulled away from the edge, the boatman cut the engine and pointed. Considering there are only supposed to be about one hundred of these creatures left, we saw a very large percentage of the total population. They were constantly coming to the surface, and came fairly close to our boat a few times. They're quite strange looking dolphins compared to the bottle-nosed ones I'm used to; these have a snub nose and a big grin. Unfortunately they only come to the surface briefly, so I completely failed to get any photos of them. I do have a few short video clips, which I'll upload at some point. The boatman asked us if we wanted to go to the rapids, just upstream of the dolphin play area, for another dollar each, so we decided we might as well. When we got to the rapids he just parked the boat on a sand bank and said "now we swim". So, leaving poor Joanne on the sandbank as she didn't have any modest enough clothing to swim in, the boatman and I stripped down to our pants and splashed about in the Mekong. The water seemed really nice and clean.

Joanne with Sugar cane juice

On the way back to town we bought some more sugar cane juice and then I spotted a stall selling a local speciality I'd read about: sticky rice, mixed with beans and coconut, cooked in sticks of bamboo; it's an on-the-go snack. Clearly we had to stop for some. I noticed that they also had strings of banana leaf parcels hanging up, which I thought might be the other speciality I'd read about i.e. spiced pickled fish, wrapped in banana leaf. I love banana leaf parcels, because without speaking the language, you are never sure what you're going to get. Anyway, before I had a chance to buy anything, some spoiled VIP brats drove up in a black Toyota Hilux and bought every one of the banana leaf parcels. Luckily I found some more back in town, and discovered that they were indeed pickled fish and chilli, wrapped in a holy basil leaf, then the banana leaf. Really delicious! And the rice was quite nice as well.

Pickled fish in a basil leaf (in a banana leaf)

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The Happy Couple on March 10, 2009 from Kracheh, Cambodia

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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