Cambodia? It's wild! Skip Angkor Wat and explore this country's natural wonders for an epic adventure Annable Venning says Cambodia's countryside and wildlife is 'entrancing' She sees rare Irrawaddy dolphins on a stretch of the Mekong River READ MORE: My move from Berkshire to Barbados fulfilled all of my fantasies By Annabel Venning for the Daily Mail Published: 08:24, 19 July 2024 | Updated: 08:24, 19 July 2024 e-mail View comments Floating mid-stream in the Mekong River, we hold our breath. Our guide in the kayak next to ours points to where we need to look. And there it is: a whooshing noise, like a big sigh or sneeze, and the flash of a shiny grey back, curving out of the water and disappearing again.
It’s a rare Irrawaddy dolphin. And then another. And another.
Sometimes they pop up just feet from the kayak, almost within touching distance. Irrawaddy dolphins, named after Myanmar’s Irrawaddy River, are found here on the Mekong in Cambodia. They are shyer than their bottlenose cousins, less given to showy acrobatics.
But this elusiveness makes them even more mesmerising. Instead of a long ‘bottle’ nose they have a bulging forehead and short, snubbed beak that gives them a cuddly look. When the river is low from January to May, they gather in nine deep-water pools along a stretch of the Mekong that runs from the Laos border south to the Cambodian town of Kratie, a six-hour minibus ride north-east from the capital Phnom Penh.
The current takes you downstream throug.