Did I mention they were endangered?

The Irrawaddy dolphins are almost never called the Irrawaddy dolphins - always the endangered Irrawaddy dolphins, as if the word "endangered" has become a permanent prefix to their name. These days, their status as endangered defines them more than any of their other characteristics, like being one of the few species of fresh water dolphins that can also survive in salt water. For whatever reason, people tend to equate scarcity with value, and since there are only about 100 of these dolphins left, they have become a moderate tourist attraction in the small, fairly remote and beautiful town of Kratie.


So with our time in Cambodia soon coming to and end, we decided that we should take a look at what all the fuss is about, and take the 6 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh to Kratie.

You always have to expect the unexpected on Cambodian roads, so I was only a little surprised, when passing through one of the many crazy intersections in the city, to see a man walking his dog - while riding his motorbike. The dog, which was a big German Shepard, was understandably a little flustered about being pulled on a lead by a crazy man through an incomprehensible maze of death machines, so the man was having a little trouble, and had to stop and get off his bike (in the middle of the intersection, of course) to persuade the dog to continue. We zoomed past, and who knows what happened next.

We arrived in Kratie a little latter than we expected, but with time enough to grab a couple of motorbike taxis out to the nearest dolphin viewing place. The dolphin conservation efforts are led by a well funded NGO, and it was all fairly well regulated and controlled - that is to say, they were as well regulated and controlled as things get in Cambodia.

Fully prepared to be disappointed, we hopped in a boat (just the two of us and a driver) and headed off. The sun was looming low on the horizon. With so few of these animals left, and so little time available, what were the chances we would find one?


Very good, apparently. The dolphins are creatures of habit, sticking close to their favoured territory, and seemed quite unconcerned about the presence of five noisy tourist boats hanging around. We saw a pod of 6 or 7 almost immediately and they came quite close to the boats (the drivers turn their engines off and use oars when they are near). They have bulbous heads and small dorsal fins, but otherwise they look, unsurprisingly, like any other dolphin.

So why do people go out of their way to see them here, when they can watch dolphins in theme parks doing synchonised jumps through hoops? That part is still a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe we get more satisfaction out of seeing them (and disturbing them) in their natural habitat; maybe we just want to be able to say that we saw the famous endangered Irrawaddy dolphins before they disappeared completely.

And they are definitely disappearing, at a rate of 15-20% a year. They are not hunted, but are often caught in fishing nets, and the fish that are their food source are disappearing through a combination of overfishing and the changes in ecology being wrought by the construction of dams. At various points along its length, the mighty Mekong flows through China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam - all have plans to dam it. The whole region is growing rapidly and will stop at nothing to sate its hunger for energy.

There are currently two major dams on the Mekong, with 8-10 more in the planning stages. This will likely have a devastating effect, not just on the ecology of the river, but on the livelihoods of the fishermen and farmers who rely on its natural cycles. Of course, none of that matters to the developers, who will be selling the electricity at inflated prices to a desperate market.

Well, at least it's good for global warming, right? True. But I recently read a scary statistic - the electricity from the world's largest and most destructive hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam, will only just cover the demand from the millions of new air-conditioners the Chinese are expected to buy in 2008.

So it's not just the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin that is suffering from the massive, unrestrained development in this part of the world, it's all of us.

Anyway, back to the story. After our little glimpse of nature and some wandering around the scenic little town, we headed back to PP on the wrong bus. Not wrong because it was going in the wrong direction, but because it was the slightly cheaper but significantly more uncomfortable bus preferred by locals. It wasn't too bad, and we've suffered through much worse, but the air conditioning left a lot to be desired. We sat in the back row on seats which had the added feature of being warmed by the engine. So we sat sweating for six hours. None of this would be worth mentioning, except for the bizarre behaviour of the people around us. They were wearing jumpers! One young-ish girl nearby wore a thick, fur-lined coat, and a hat, and a mask over her face.

Sometimes I just don't understand these people.