Kratie and the Rare Irrawaddy Dolphins

Trip Start Feb 20, 2006
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Trip End Feb 20, 2007


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Wednesday, April 19, 2006

From Siem Reap we made the four hour journey to Kompong Cham without mishap (surprisingly!) and haggled for what seemed like ages to get a 'shared' taxi to Kratie. In South East Asia a shared taxi is a family car seating eight, yes eight, so four of us clambered in the back and four in the front including the driver - I don't know how he was able to drive considering he had a Cambodian sat on his gear stick!! Anyway having paid $7 each for this privilage (we were ripped off royally) we arrived in Kratie, a small town in Northern Cambodia. The plan was to make our way to Laos from Kratie, however we made a school boy error and assumed we could get a Laos visa on the border - we were wrong! It just so happened that you could get a visa on arrival at every other border except the one we were entering - a big mistake! The only option we had was to pay our hotel $120 to send someone with our passports to the Laos Embassy in Phnom Penh eight hours away, as you can imagine we were kicking ourselves over the fact that it cost so much (it usually costs $70) and that we had to trust some random guy with our passports for four days - ahhhh Han on the lookout for the Irrawady Dolphins
Han on the lookout for the Irrawady Dolphins
 ! Anyway we had no option and tried to fill the days as best we could, Kratie is renowned for the rare Irrawaddy dolphins living in the Mekong river - for various reasons there are now only 75 out of 1000 dolphins left! We hired a boat to take us out for an hour and caught a few glimpses of the dolphins, they are very different from the dolphins you would see in Sea World and they didn't show off and perform for us which was a bit disappointing!! It was annoying that we had to spend so long in Kratie as apart from the dolphins there was absolutely nothing to do, we spent the next three days going for walks and reading books and generally wasting precious time! We were both sick as well so we were fed up and made our escape as soon as we got our passports back - thank god, neither of us could relax until we had them back in our possession! At least we've learnt from our mistake and it gave us an opportunity to catch up on our website, on to the border and Laos!
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