Dan's Adventure

The Irrawaddy dolphin is a rare breed of freshwater dolphin. It is an endangered species with as few as 75 left in the Mekong river between Kratie and the Laos border, where there was reportedly up to 1000 before the Khmer Rouge took control of the country. During that regime the dolphins were hunted for their oils.

From Kratie I hired a motorbike to drive me the 15km to Kampi, where it is possible to take a boat out onto the Mekong to try and spot the Irrawaddy dolphins. The boat operators have a fixed price, regardless of the number of people going in one boat, it still costs each person the same number of dollars. This worked in my favour as I ended up in a boat on my own whilst others looked rather crowded.

We spent an hour on the river watching the Irrawaddy dolphins circling the boat, leaping in and out of the water, and hiding from the camera whenever I tried to take a picture. The photo here is the best that I managed to get, they were just too damn quick, there one minute, gone the next.