Mekong Dolphins, Mopeds and Marbles

Took 6 hours to get to Kratie from Phenom Penh, on a really comfortable aircon bus.  As soon as we arrived at a guest house a young guy organised for us to go and see the Irrawaddy fresh water dolphins.  We got on back of a moto and rode for about 30mins to a boat.  We weren't expecting to see much but within 2mins we had seen a dolphin that was actually pretty close to the boat.  We were on the boat for about 45mins and ended up seeing quite a few.  It was really cool seeing them but they had really ugly faces, not like normal dolphins at all.  The sun was also setting so the whole thing was really good.  That evening we organised to go on a day tour with the guy that organised the dolphin trip.

The day trip was really good.  After some very poor negotiating we got on 2 motorbikes with the guide and another driver, for $15 each.  We went on some very bumpy roads through villages.  Crossed the river on a ferry, saw lots of livestock milling about.  We went to a secondary school for about 20minutes.  Not sure why, but ended up talking to a few pupils for abit.  Not sure if we were meant to be there or not but it was quite interesting.  For lunch we went to the guides aunts house for lunch, which was nice.  In the afternoon we went to a Cham village, I ended up playing marbles with some kids.  Some the children were very shy and almost scared of us.  On the way home we had to stop for petrol, this involves pulling up on the side of the road which has lots of Johnny Walker bottles filled with petrol.  This is then poured into the motorbike.

It was a good day that was dampened slightly by the fact that we paid to much for the tour, and the guide bought us some bus tickets to Ban Lung that we paid to much for so he would have pocketed a lot of commission for them.  We trusted him so didn't question the price.  I guess he is only trying to make money!!!  We did in the end tell him that it was unfair that he blatantly ripped us off for the bus tickets because we did question the price at the time, but he said that was what they cost, so he did lie to us.  It was a good day however but he got me very angry because we trusted him.

The next day we waited for our bus to Ban Lung, it turned up 2 hours late.  We had seat numbers but the bus was completely full, anyway the conductor ordered people about and turfed someone out of our seats so we could sit.  Felt slightly bad about it but we did pay to much for our tickets so not that bad.  The unseated Khmer passengers were given plastic chairs to sit in the aisle.  The road was awful, it was so bumpy, and the bus broke down twice!!!  The last time we all had to push start it which was very funny.  Our bags were also being used as seats in the aisle so everyone was walking on them when they got on and off the bus so they were filthy.  We left at 3 and arrived at 8.30 which wasn't to bad at all. I was expecting it to take 8 hours with all the breakdowns we had.

Jon