Dolphins and Coffee

Leaving Le Bungalow in Kratie bright and early, we went a bit further upstream on the Mekong river and went out in a boat like these below to search for the Irrawaddy dolphins.

We searched for quite a while without any sight of the dolphins, the main theory being that it was too windy.  We did see some birds.

Then suddenly we saw something break the surface and that was it, we spotted and could follow group after group of dolphins as they swam and rose above the water.  We seemed to do much better than the other boats which then resorted to following us.

The dolphins were almost impossible to photograph as by the time you'd seen them break and reached for your camera, they'd gone under again.  But I did manage to get a couple of shots. Yes, they are dolphins.

Next stop was a Buddhist temple on top of an unusual hill in the middle of an otherwise flat plain, presumably volcanic.  This had lots of nice statues and murals, although the effect was ruined a bit by seeing monks on mobile phones.  We had to climb about 365 steps to get to the top, and on the flight you can see below, the girl is helpfully pointing out the snake half way up.  It's fine Ra said to her, thinking it ws a short fat green snake that is quite common and harmless.  When we got there it turned out to be a very angry, thin tree snake that had fallen out of its tree.  Ra managed to fling it into the woods with a stick.

Here's another set of statues without a snake.

For lunch we stopped at a coffee plantation in the mondulkiri hills. This place was fantastic with all sorts of fruit, vegetables, salads being grown.  We had lunch in the shelter you can se below.

We had delicious iced coffees from the local coffee and then a spicy beef and vegetable dish that is still the dish of the holiday, it was so fresh and flavoursome.  Following this were big rice pancakes filled with pork and bamboo shoots, accompanied by a plate of fresh salad leaves.  Absolutely delicious, and we've bought a half kilo of the coffee beans to bring home.

Finally, it was off to our home for the next two nights.  We had a chalet at The Nature Lodge.  This was a fairly basic wooden chalet in grounds where horses and cows roam. Probably other animals as well that I can't remember. It had natural air conditioning which worked really well as we were up in the hills and it was a bit cooler.  There was also a good breeze on the first night.  The central facility was a big tree house where you went in the evening for drinks, food and wifi and at breakfast for excellent muesli with fruit, actually more like fruit with muesli, with loads of mango, banana, pineapple, water melon and dragon fruit in the bowel.  We've eaten more fresh fruit on this holiday so far than we normally do in a year.  Many pit stop snacks involve a mango or pineapple.  Here are some pictures of our chalet.

The reason we are here, just outside Sen Monorom, is to see elephants, and I'll tell you about them in the next post.