We checked out of the Phnom Penh hotel and walked the kilometre to the bus station. The bus left a few minutes late and the journey was uneventful, though long. This time we had leg room, which was great, so we could even watch an episode of x-files on the bus.

It took seven and a half hours to reach Kratie, and we arrived just in time for sunset over the Mekong river . We stopped to watch and it was very pretty indeed. Our guest house was just a few hundred metres down the road - Kratie is not large - and we headed there dreckly. Our room was a little dismal; bug-filled, with a lumpy mattress, and dysfunctional air conditioning. Air-con was necessary because it was extremely hot, even at night time.

We swiftly headed out for a meal to the only vegetarian friendly restaurant marked on Happy Cow, and had a very nice meal. Here, we met Ania from Poland, who we'd seen first on our bus, and arranged to go out with Ania for our following day's activities. When we returned to our guest house, it transpired that Ania was staying there as well. On our way back, we found two groups of people doing aerobic activity on the river bank, including men, women, children. Some of them had matching outfits and hats. We checked out the roof top bar in our guest house, which was very nice and with lovely views over the river, had a drink, and met and got chatting to Reme, from Switzerland . There didn't seem to be many tourists around in Kratie, and we were happy to get to know the couple we did meet.

Kratie, a town on the Mekong river, almost wasn't part of our itinerary. Jayna particularly wanted to see the Mekong's critically endangered river dolphins, and there were only two choices to do this. One was on the Cambodia/ Laos border, where there were only five dolphins left. The other was Kratie, with a marginally more healthy population of nearly 90 dolphins. Before committing, we wanted to check that we wouldn't be doing more harm than good to the dolphins. We read about the WWF's attention to preserving the dolphin population, and how work is ongoing with the local population for conserving the species. Nowhere would tell us whether the dolphins were disturbed by tourists going to see them, and there certainly wasn't a definitive answer as to whether going, and contributing to tourism, was better than staying away, and not disturbing the population . In the end, we decided to go and make sure that our boat driver behaved responsibly. It meant a few travel days to get there and back again, which was another consideration. In the end, we decided to go for it, and we were happy we did. Kratie town had great atmosphere, the people were friendly, and children waved hello to us all the time.

On Friday 11th, we met Ania and debated the best way to get to our main activity. The dolphins tended to be about 15km north, in the river by a town called Kampi. Our guest house offered us a tuk-tuk at an extortionate rate, which we declined, and set off to find one ourselves. We headed back to the bus stop and found one immediately, who would take us for a third of the price. Half an hour later, after bumping along dusty roads, we arrived at Kampi and the boat place. We purchased our tickets - which did reference a fee for conserving the dolphins, we were pleased to see - and headed to our cheery bright yellow boat to go onto the river .

Dolphins appeared almost immediately. Our boat driver used his oar to steer us out into the river, and the dolphins would surface for air not very far away from the boat. It was absolutely idyllic, sitting on a calm boat on the Mekong river, with stunning sand bars and small islands dotted around, whilst the occasional dolphin surfaced, took a breath, and went back under the water again. Feeling totally blissful, we enjoyed the time. Unfortunately for us, another boat came along and was using it's engine. This simply took the dolphins away from us, meaning we had to use our engine to get nearer them. The same thing happened a couple more times, disturbing the bliss somewhat. We didn't see any dolphin acrobatics, as apparently it was the wrong time of year for such behaviour. After we'd had our fill of dolphins, the boat driver took us to a sand bar in shallow water. We all went for a wade, and Ken went in for a swim in his pants. The water was a warm temperature, it looked clear and pollution free, and the sand felt glorious underfoot .

All too soon, we were heading back to shore. We'd had a great time and, we decided to go to a wat on the way back, at Phnom Sombok. This area, just off the road and up a small hill, was much more extensive than we were expecting. It appeared to have resident monks, a library of materials, numerous Buddhist buildings, stupas and statues everywhere. We had a good wander around, said hello to the many cats, found a couple of monkeys, and a whole bunch of tourists who happened to follow us to the veggie-friendly restaurant back in Kratie.

We had a lovely meal with Ania and headed back to the guest house. Here, we took a nap for a while, to recover from the heat. After waking up, we went back to the roof top bar for some drinks and to watch a less remarkable sunset. Here, we got chatting to several people, including Ian from Glasgow, and some women from Spain and the Netherlands. We swapped some travel stories, and later Ania came and joined us. After a very pleasant evening, we retired, ready for another long bus journey the following day.

Next stop - back to Phnom Penh!