Mornings that start with crabs crossing can’t be bad (the Mekong’s is behind the street). People stared at me to find out why I was laughing and taking a picture, and I could tell from their reactions this is a normal thing on a Kratie morning.
Honestly, only here for 2 nights and have to be ready at FIVE FIFTY and not superkeen on bustravelling for hours again tomorrow. However — Kratie is the first place I could imagine to live in. Siem Reap, no. Mondul Kiri – too far off. But Kratie is niiice. And I think – you know for me, it’s not the question of am I more a mountain lover or a sea lover. I love rivers. And the Mekong is — well it is — sa’ad. Gorgeous. Wild. Soft. Strong. Lovely. It is everything.
I was also happy because in the morning, in at Sorya Kayaking (with guesthouse and restaurant on a roofed terrace with view of the Mekong) tours, I did find out two fellow travellers had checked in later yesterday evening and were booked for the tour as well. Congrats again to your passed finals / exams / pieces of superimportant papers, U2!
We were trucked (or rather shipped, huh) a good 20km down the road to get close to the dolphins favourite areas, and then – clean Barbarian got soaked in mud again, so did my trousers, so did all of me latest when I went for a swim in the Mekong from our island that we paused on.
We all got dry bags to store our precious belongings (or what we think them to be) in, and getting the camera meant not to paddle, so the actual first action is missing in pic-form. The currents of the Mekong look impressive any time of day, I guess also due to rainy season, and to start with we were told how to behave in worst-case-scenarios, so I was not really tempted to take pictures, but to find out how to paddle… At the very end, with my energy already quite low, but also with the experience of being in the rhythm both with Ben (our guide) ((whose pace is quite fast, mind you, but at least I could also have given up and he’d easily have paddled us back to the coast, but that would have hurt my German discipline so I breathed and paddled, paddled and breathed and am quite proud)). Oh sentence unfinished — both with Ben and the river.
Weather was shitty for Cambodian measures, grey skies, a few drops of rain lateron, almost no sun —- I felt it was perfect. With sun, I would have turned the colour of a cooked crab despite sun lotion sun lotion sun lotion. Though you could put on mud to protect against the sun (old elephant trick), I guess.
Booat camp exercise…
I’m still old fashioned with my camera, right – but I love taking selfies and not knowing how they turn out (until a second later…). This is one of my fav pics – parts of me and Ben
Our island stop, and the swimming event location. No pic – I swam! It was lovely bathtub temperature, mud at the toes, and it went deep quite fast and with a nice current. I splashed around to relax my neck which was taken by surprise to get involved that much.
my view which shall not leave me for a long long time to come. There was a moment, watching the current while we were „parking“ in the branches of a (flooded) tree to watchout for the whales (Maren, they were watchoutwhales, because the played with us and moved whenever we moved, smart show-offs and less keen to pose than any elephant lady I’ve seen). The world was moving through me, and it felt as if something inside of me – I dunno – fell into place, or moved out of me, or moved through me, or — I really don’t know, I have experiences close to that, but not LIKE that and —- I loved it.
I would already have loved to (almost…) cross the Mekong, only with the sound of our paddling and with a rather quite Ben-guide, which I loved, I swallowed all of my questions. Also, to paddle with a rhythm and hit the water at somewhat the right angle – takes some presence and NOT thinking about anything else. Have I mentioned I like kayaking? Let’s see what my neck says tomorrow, next stop is great for kayaking, too.
So despite all that – seeing dolphins makes me happy from 0-infinty (even if today it really wasn’t 0….) in a split second. Blowing-water-noise – cool. Seeing the blink of a fin – cool. Seeing a bit more – cool. We didn’t see them jump (they do that less often than seawater-dolphins, only if they have Happy Hour and well, seemingly my Happy Hour was so big that they didn’t need to add an extra to that), but they move very very elegantly, can’t describe it. I’ve already deleted a LOT of photos with — water on them. A few exceptions:
We stayed in their area a long time, then paddled through one more flooded forest. I love flooded forests. And paddling competition when I have a powerful local guide as my captain…
*sigh*
Leaving here is hard. I’m glad I go for another river tomorrow and will have the Mekong back for a final goodbye in Phnom Penh. Otherwise – laugh at me – I’d feel heartbroken.
As for a look back on my travel-day yesterday, a few more pics.
I made friends at Nature Lodge in the morning out of the frog-spider-section which was a very good way to wake up.
The minibus-view from my seat, and I forgot to mention it had a sign at the back-door inside reading „Notausstieg“ (emergency exit in German).
The fancy and worn down hotel in Kratie, Mekong Dolphin (too lazy to put a link, I need to head back to bed!)
aaaaand the sunset-view from my balcony (reason to book this place) of which I took a million photos
(with a swallow on this upper pic – there’s many here and I loooove them)
And with that, I wish you all a very Good Night and hope you wish me luck for tomorrow – my bus ticket reaches only to some station in Phnom Penh and then I hopefully find out it’s true it’s only 20m to find the right station to find/book/mount a bus to Kampot.
P.S. I also love the huge bamboos here. Very close to a bamboo forest, but I’ll pretend that’s not true cause that’s the top reason I want to go to China. One day…