The bus rides, at this point, are nothing. We crammed our stuff under the seats and had our typical rations of water and bread ready for the hours ahead of us. Derek made a funny comment that the kid next to us "killed Winnie the Pooh" as he had a backpack of his likeness hanging by the neck around his seat. The family to our left let their kid run in the aisles with his toys. We watched some strange picture on tribal fighting in Cambodia, with a very annoying woman who talked like Hello Kitty. ALL Cambodian women featured in movies speak this way - only dogs can make out the pitch they find appropriate. I think they believe it makes them sound innocent and sweet, but instead, you want to bust your own eardrums to keep from hearing the siren's call to throw yourself over the nearest bridge.
A nice American woman, who had married a Cambodian man, told us when to get off. We enjoyed the scenery and switched seats to have more room as people got off. The bus was freezing, and I put on Derek's socks and extra clothes to keep myself conscious until we arrived.
When we got there, we were dropped off in the middle of a street and began to pick our way along to a $5/night hotel. A man walked next to us the whole way, telling us he had just the place for us to stay - and it turned out, that he was pitching the same place we'd already chosen. He came all the way up to our room with us, telling us about the rates to see the dolphins (that's all this town is living on). We told him we'd think about it, and left for dinner when we finally kicked him out.
We had dinner (after a failed attempt to find the night market - if we found it, we didn't know it, it was probably that small) at another hotel where we ended up booking a driver for the next day - the rates were half of what our little "friend" quoted. He wasn't happy the next morning when he found out we "cheated" on him, but we had a splendid drive with a French couple out to meet the dolphins.
This Irrawady River dolphin, closely related to the Orca, is a round-nosed entertaining character that lives in the Mekong river and its delta waterways. The water is muddy brown, but the dolphins surface for air every few minutes, giving you a priceless opportunity to see them for yourself. There are only 100 or so left in the world, and about three quarters live in the river near this Cambodian town.
We sat for an hour out on the water, filming them whenever we could manage to catch them in the viewfinder. We didn't see them jump, and pictures were hardly possible, but it was a really fantastic opportunity. We stopped by a hill temple on the way back to town that isn't even really worth mentioning, and packed our things. We were harassed all the way to the station by our little "friend" from the day before, who told us we could get discounted tickets from him, and he reserved them for us, and we didn't want them. He had a few VERY unkind things to say to us, and for the second time on our trip, we were told by a local never to come back to Cambodia. Of course, the other 99% were charming, so we indeed would come back, in spite of his rude comments. We waited for much longer than promised for the bus, which was loaded with tourists when it finally arrived ("only 30 minutes more"...."you sure? you said that 30 minutes ago"..."yes, i'm sure, only 30 minutes more") and we had a surprisingly white-filled, peaceful time watching some sequel of The Mummy until it skipped itself into stop mode, and we watched as our driver tried for a half hour to maneuver the bus over a very narrow and rickety-looking bridge while a hundred onlookers sat by to see if he'd hit the edge and end us all, into the muddy ravine.
I wouldn't mind so much, as long as the bus didn't kill one of those dolphins in the process.
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