In the morning, we
walked into town and had a breakfast at Le Tokae. Afterwards, while
the girls and I sat at the table, Kate went off and checked out the
options for getting a bus up to Laos, and after we had paid for the
food, we walked up the road and bought some tickets from a nearby
restaurant and guesthouse. Rather worryingly, it took the girl three
goes to get the tickets right, filling in the wrong destination, the
wrong date and then not ticking the boat box for the transfer over to
the Mekong island that we're planning to stay on (we should have
taken this as an omen – more of which tomorrow). We then walked up
the road a bit further and hired a tuk-tuk to drive us up to see the
Irrawaddy river dolphins. Although classified as vulnerable
worldwide, 90 per cent of the remaining population of these dolphins
is found in Bangladesh and the other populations are all classified
as critically endangered. The Mekong population is down to fewer than
100 individuals, with a small group of about 15-20 living about 20
kilometres upriver from Kratie.
When we got there,
we paid the $26 fee and walked down to the river, where we all
climbed into a waiting boat, which took us out into and across the
strong current. There were small clumps of vegetation in the river,
among which large white egrets hunted, their sinuous necks poised
ready to spear their sharp yellow beaks down at passing fish. We
headed for an area of slightly slacker water on the other side of the
river where a couple of boats were already parked. As we approached
them, we saw our first dolphins – dark grey, bulbous shapes parting
the milky-coffee-coloured water and then curving back down again, a
small fin rising from the water and then disappearing back under it.
They surfaced both singly and in groups, letting off an explosive
exhalation followed by a longer sigh, a bit like someone clearing a
snorkel. The dolphins are obviously restricted to quite a small area
of the river – apparently they need particularly deep pools to swim
in - and we watched them move from place to place, our driver
following at a safe distance. Taking photographs was difficult as
predicting where the dolphins would surface was nigh on impossible
and the window of opportunity that opened as they surfaced shut
quickly as they dived again. When our allotted hour was up, the boat
took us back to the pier and we got in our tuk-tuk and went back to
Kratie, getting the driver to drop us off at the hostel.
From there, we
walked up to a very local restaurant on the corner. The staff looked
quite surprised to see a group of white folks sitting down, but they
had an English menu and we managed to order a few dishes. The food
was pretty good, although the chicken with lemongrass, while very
tasty, came with the boniest bits of chicken I have ever eaten. The
restaurant did a sideline in hideous figurines and furniture carved
out of beautiful pieces of rainforest hardwood and as we finished our
meal, we watched in fascination as a Cambodian family began haggling
over a few choice pieces. It was all slightly odd – we were eating
in a very local, very cheap restaurant, but parked outside was a
Porsche (admittedly a slightly battered Porsche) and when the family
patriarch finally beat the restaurant staff down to an acceptable
price, she pulled from her pocket an enormous wad of $100 bills. This
was something we hadn't seen too much of on our journey – serious
local money.
After lunch, we
walked into town and down to the pier, where we waited for the little
ferry that would take us across to Koh Trong, the large island in the
river opposite Kratie. When we got there, we walked up the path to
where there was a small bicycle-hire shack and picked out two bikes.
The girls then hopped on the wire racks at the back and off we went.
We started out on a narrow concrete path, which Kate and I both
wobbled off a few times as we tried to make way for the motorbikes
and scooters and horse and cart with which we had to share it. After
a while, however, the concrete ended and we were on a dirt track that
obviously turns to deep mud in the rain, with some areas sculpted
into ruts and waves now baked rock-hard in the sun, making for quite
a bumpy ride for the girls. The path took us past a more manicured
microcosm of the sort of rural countryside we've been driving through
on the mainland – here the houses were a bit less hovel-like, with
actual gardens full of flowering plants around them, the fields were
well tended and the cattle well fed. We stopped frequently to let the
girls' backsides recover but were still all the way around the island
in about an hour or so. When we git back to where we had started, I
managed to ride straight past the ferry pier – distracted by the
temple on the other side of the path – but luckily, I recognised a
sign we had passed earlier before we had gone too far, realised my
mistake and headed back. After dropping off the bikes we walked down
to the pier and watched the ferry fight with the current as it made
its way across to us. When it docked, we climbed aboard and took
seats near the front.
As we waited to
leave, a man arrived with a small girl on an IV drip, the bottle of
what I later learned was probably dextrose attached to a piece of
bamboo that he held aloft. This is something we've seen a lot of in
Kratie for some reason. Everywhere you go, you'll see people
travelling around with IV drips attached to their arms – children,
adults, walking, riding motorbikes, in the back of bullock carts.
We're at a loss as to why they're so prevalent here, but it really is
a distinctive feature of the town.
When we reached the
other side of the river we walked up the bank and into town. We
decided to check out the covered market, and managed to find Sarah a
new pair of shorts. Back outside, we bought some dragonfruit for
tomorrow's journey up to Laos and some grilled pork for this
afternoon's journey across the road to Le Tokae for some beer and
chips and cards (and grilled pork). Then, as the sun began to set, we
walked back to the hostel, where we had dinner in the restaurant,
marking the conclusion of our Cambodian adventure with the bottle of
Australian Shiraz we liberated from Song Saa.
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