The first day there I met three guys travelling South East Asia by motorbike, they proved to be valuable new friends offering me a ride to the river dolphin reserve. After a few drinks and an agreement to meet early the next morning to explore the town before heading off to the river I got an early night, the whole town was in bed by 10:30, as i was absolutely exhausted this suited me just fine!
The next morning I set off on a super important mission - buy a digital camera. Only now can I fully appreciate the ease of getting these things in big cities. I walked around the whole town twice and only managed to find one, a previously broken and repaired baby blue canon that eats batteries and has a delayed flash...I reluctantly handed over $90 and prated the dolphin photos would be worth it.
It was a fairly short ride through the beautiful villages, avoiding live stock and waving as we went. We arrived to the scene of 7 men sipping what looked to be water but definitely wasn't and one of these was to be our trusty driver. Pheroom offered "No dolphins, no money", pulled up a boat and away we went. It took a fair while to reach the dolphin's main habitat but within minutes of Pheroom cutting the engine we glimpsed fins and noses breaking the surface of the water.
Here I found out just how far my $90 dollars got me, I was better of with the $7 dollar disposable I'd bought as a last resort! Each time a dolphin jumped - click - and well take a look, see if you can see any dolphins...
Back on land we were invited to take part in the short circle. I had my first taste of real home grown Lao-Lao (rice whiskey) or maybe it should be Khmer-Khmer as i still had to cross the border! They bought it in plastic bags, decanted the liquid into water bottles and, just in case it wasn't strong enough, added a splash of Angkor beer for an extra kick! We drank for about an hour before riding became too hard, waved our goodbyes and headed back towards the town.
About half way back was a sign for Sombok Mountain, with time to kill we decided to check it out. It wasn't so much a mountain as it was a high standing temple. As usual the temple came with many steps and halfway up was my first snake sighting of 2011!At the summit the views were beautiful. Inside the temple was a different story, it was a temple unlike any other I'd seen before - grotesque and obscene torture pictures covered every wall. On close inspection it seems they depicted the tensions between Buddhism and Hinduism but I can't say for sure.
We made it home just in time for sunset, which we watched from the edge of the Mekong with a beer and a bag of fruit. The perfect end to a lovely day.
My next day was spent sleeping, shopping and sorting, in preparation for my departure to Laos. I was impatient and excited to get back to explore what I felt could be one of my favourite countries from the short time I'd spent there in July. Goodbye Kratie, hello 4,000 islands!
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