Time for some more blog posts. After 5.5 months of poker with no real breaks, I decided to take a few weeks off and head to southern and central Laos, where I haven’t been to in - lets see, 14 years. I’ve always liked Laos, it was one of my favorite parts of my Southeast Asia trip when I was 25, and I was looking forward to going back. On my way there I decided to take a pit stop in the town of Kratie, in Cambodia, where you can see the Irrawaddy dolphins. There’s only about 100 of them left, which is actually a decent improvement in the last decade, as there’s been a campaign to not let them go extinct in the Mekong. There’s also three other populations of them in Southeast Asia – in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar (the Irrawaddy River is in Myanmar), all with less than 100. But fortunately in Bangladesh, their numbers are over 6,000. In all these places there has been an effort to make seeing the dolphins an eco-tourism money maker, to varying degrees of success.
In this part of the Mekong the dolphins live in basically 150km stretch of the river up to the Laos border, where there is a set of waterfalls/big rapids. The fact that this section of waterway is unnavigable by boat is good for the dolphins. Although economically speaking, this set of rapids is a real killer, especially for Laos, cutting them off from commercial river shipping.
River emptying into the mekong, the water is moving pretty good in rainy season
This guy should be on a promo-poster for boatmen everywhere, god damn.
I hopped off the minibus in the town of Kratie and then hopped in a tuk-tuk to a smaller guesthouse just outside of town along the Mekong. Normally I don’t like staying outside of town, but this place rents scooters, and with a scooter you can stay basically anywhere, no problem. It’s interesting that even though the street I was on runs right next to the river, almost all the houses were set up to face the street, with basically no effort made to give themselves a back-facing living space or extra river views. I do understand that these are small, basic, wooden houses and people don’t have much money, but I suppose I expected that there would be some wooden balconies built in the back to look out over the river, or something like that, but nope.
Anyway, I got situated in my room and waited for someone to grab me a scooter. The place was run by a friendly local woman, who has a foreigner husband, although he wasn’t in town and it sounds like he spends most of the time out of the country. The guest house is known in town because they have a big pizza kiln, and while I rarely eat western food in Cambodia, I might have to make an exception here. Actually what I meant is I almost never eat western food for dinner, I do eat western breakfast, and sometimes salads/sandwiches for lunch. Cambodia doesn’t really do breakfast food, well they do but it’s mostly just small variations of the same noodle/rice dishes that they’d have for lunch or dinner.
Soon enough I got my ride, and I was off north of the city to the boat launch where you can get to the dolphins. It was 4pm and I had until 5pm before they closed up shop. I found it alright, I was the only person around, I paid the $10 ticket and ended up getting my own personal boat + driver. Nice. I had my long telephoto lens ready to go in hopes of getting some good photos of these guys. It wasn’t long before the driver pointed some out in the distance. You can see them, but they only come up for a few seconds at time. They’re quite loud though, you can easily hear them expelling air from their blowhole even if you don’t see them. And they are friggen hard to take photos of! You see one come up and then try to extrapolate where exactly it will pop up about 30-45 seconds later. And the only way to get a good shot of their head is right when it resurfaces (and if you have a good angle and are close enough). It’s very tricky.
We had an hour on the boat, and after 30 minutes of trying to get even a halfway decent photo of these things, I decided it was futile and just decided to mostly sit back and enjoy being on the mighty Mekong in the presence of such a critically endangered animal. Although if I had to do it all over again I probably would have signed up for the kayaking trips they do to see the dolphins. They don’t like boat motor noises. It was a nice afternoon on the river though, and I did get a few shots of some dark, schlong-like objects partially out of the water!
Put this one in National Geo
What I liked even better than the dolphins was just simply riding around the countryside at sunset. Cambodia is known for the their classic wooden houses in rural areas, and the mekong region especially has a lot of them. And they seem to be pretty unique to just Cambodia, I don’t recall seeing anything with this styling in Thailand, Laos, or Vietnam. So I spend that evening, as well as a good chunk of the next day driving around and marveling at the houses.
downtown Kratie at night
It’s very hot during the day, so a lot of people shop at night
In the next town over there’s some very old French colonial buildings (almost 100 years old) that are right in the middle of the market area, which is kind of cool to see. Word on the street is that they’re going to get knocked down for being unsafe though, rather than restored, which is a bummer. You’d think in 2025 there’d more of an effort to preserve these old heritage buildings, but maybe there’s no money for it or it’s not worth the effort. I don’t really know. But I appreciated the buildings.
I’m a big fan of Cambodian market fashion
It’d be a shame if they knocked this down
And that’s about all for my quick stop in Kratie. Here’s a bunch of houses I liked : )
