By Garrett Cooper
28 Dec. 2013
When I put my pants on in Stung Treng, a scorpion fell out, the first one I have seen in Cambodia. We took our time in town before paddling down to a nice village just to have a look. We couldn't teach because it was already time to find a place to camp.
29 Dec. 2013
We had a good paddle and some sections with a swift current to help us along. Since the water is high, we are able to just paddle over the top of many obstacles that would be in our way later in the dry season. There were still one or two places in flooded forest areas when we weren't sure if we would be able to make it through the trees, but as we approached a path was always open for us. There were few people this section of the days paddle.
There is a village on this stretch of river that I stayed in last year. They let me sleep in a little hut, cooked me dinner and breakfast, and gave me palm wine. I really wanted to visit again and teach a class but we were on the wrong side of one of the many islands and by the time I recognized where it was, it was up stream and up wind so it would have been very difficult to get to.
30 Dec. 2013
Today was a great sailing day on a big, wide section of the Mighty Mekong with few obstacles. We popped up our WindPaddle sail, listened to music on our EcoXGear speaker, and laid down while I kept us pointed towards a distant island I could see from under the brim of my hat.
We taught a nice relaxed class with some great students. I love it when one student tells another how to properly do a skill and this class had one of those students. For part of our class, Matt pretends to choke and I save him. He then pretends to choke again and we get someone from the group to save him. It's always enjoyable for everyone and it get the point across. The village was nice, calm, and full of friendly people. This village also seemed to have an over abundance of children, even by Cambodian standards.
The island we camped on was nice other than the rats and the dead animal which was luckily down wind. I only got about two hours of sleep because the wind was blowing pretty hard, there was loud music on both river banks, and I was a little sick. It was great though, all part of the adventure.
31 Dec. 2013
After setting off in the morning, the first thing we did was stop in Sambor to see the 100 Pillar Wat. The paintings in the Wats and the stories they tell continue to amaze me.
Last year I saw 30-35 Irrawaddy Dolphins on the stretch of the Mekong we have paddled so far. That's pretty good considering there are only about 80 left. This year we saw none, partially because of the routs we took which bypassed some places they frequent.
I still wasn't feeling great, so we continued on to Kratie where we had a good dinner and went to bed early.
1 Jan. 2014
Happy New Year!
Today was about seeing Kratie and resupplying. We will leave in the morning, and our next post will be in Kampong Cham.