Day 41 - Dolphins, Monkeys, and School Children - Trial by fire: new bike, first tour, first time in Asia

December 5, 2024

Day 41 - Dolphins, Monkeys, and School Children

With only three days of riding left before I need to be in Ho Chi Minh city, we decided to spend the day around Kratie to see some local highlights. A remnant population of the Irrawady River Dolphins are hanging on by a thread about 15 km upstream from Kratie near Kampi Village. As a biologist, who has studied whales and dolphins, seeing them was one of my goals for the trip.

Rather than sign up for a tour it seemed a good idea to cycle there and to visit a couple of temples - Sambok Pagoda adjoining the Mekong on the way out, and Phnom Dambok Pagoda, that sits on the only hill around, on the way home.

It was good to start the day sitting on the verandah eating sticky rice, scribbling the diary and watching the river activity, rather than rushing off.

It was a pleasant pedal upstream.

Home improvement projects are never done.

We arrived at Kampi Village late in the morning. We knew we were there when we saw the dolphin sculpture and a plethora of food and souvenir shops. Any developed country would have a small museum with information about the dolphins and a cafe.

It proved remarkably easy to organise a boat - simply pay $10 per person, walk down a huge flight of stair to the river, jump in a boat and you're on your way.

Within moments of starting to head upstream we saw a couple of dolphins. Unfortunately, they're not leaping about but instead surface rather subtly. This makes photography very difficult.

Our skipper continued heading upstream with several other boats.

After not seeing any dolphins for several minutes our skipper headed west across the Mekong and nestled near the bank. This was a terrific move. There were no other dolphin watchers there and we saw lots of them in peace and quiet.

We watched them for about half an hour. They would pop up seemingly at random, sometimes close, sometimes in the distance. Occasionally we could see a bulbous melon, other times the distinct, curved dorsal fin. But we never saw one leap from the water.

I had been thinking along the way that I might donate my field guide to the birds of southeast Asia to a school, and I had spotted this secondary school on the way up. I was impressed with the strength of bird populations in Cambodia and thought they could benefit from it. We met a couple of teachers, one of whom speaks English well. We didn't linger because even our brief visit caused considerable disruption to the school day.

Some of the children were eager to practice their English, others to clown for the camera.

There's one hill in the region, about 10 km upstream from Kratie. It's home to a magnificent temple - Phnom Sambok Pagoda. You reach it after winding through paddy. Once there, the temple stretches from the plain to the crest that you reach via hundreds of steps. A path on each level circles the hill.

The founder of the monastery - a portrait in bas relief.

What really attracted me to this temple was the population of macaques, a type of monkey. The opportunity to see two species of mammals new to me was rare.