Kratie

After finishing work i jetted over to Singapore on the Saturday to enjoy Dilan and Amali (and Mark and Tara of course), swimming pools and being waited on by two maids. The airport was absolute bedlam with people everywhere and MPs shepherding people around as it was the Hajj, but it seemed quite well organised. Was a really nice schedule cos i could sleep in at the morning when the kids went to school and then pick them up and play and midday.

But as usual time marched on entirely too quickly and sure enough i was back in Phnom Penh, landing at 5pm and had a dinner with my barang friends at Ratha's restaurant by 6pm. The next day i headed , a little hesitantly, on my farewell tour of Cambodia! (rather grand title since i only really visited three provinces). Fortuitously i accidently left my Lonely Planet and excel spreadsheet of my planned travels in the hotel room, and resolved to play it by ear from then on.

Anyway, six hours on the bus I arrived in the town of Kratie, perched on the Mekong River. The bus ride up was quite nice, i had never seen this half of the country and it is quite sparsely populated compared to my half, taken up with lots of rubber plantations. Also we passed through Kampong Cham , the site of another WFP field office, and reflected to myself how much nicer a town it is (and how pretty much every provincial capital is better than the poor old Speu' ).

Arriving mid-afternoon allowed me some time to shoot off to see Kratie's main attraction, river dolphins. They are terribly endangered apparently only sixteen or so at this site. So after a short moto ride up and some flirting in Khmer with the ticketseller lady i hopped on the boat with some Brits who were there and went dolphin spotting.

The water was glorious and we saw quite a lot, i wasnt really expecting to see anything.

Of course most of my shots were of just open water

but i did manage to catch a fin or two and zoomed them in for your viewing pleasure : )

After that on the way back we stopped at a small pagoda perched quite high up called Phnom Sambor.

I arrived back in the mid-afternoon and went out to take a fruit shake from the vendor on the riverside promenade. Chit chatting in Khmer she mentioned that apparently some german dude had fallen off the edge and died the previous day. So i took extra care as i enjoyed this beautiful sunset and prepared for my trip to Ratanakiri.