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Irrawaddy dolphin spotting on the Four Thousand Islands

In between the Cambodian and Laotian border, in the waters of the Mekong, live around 20 Irrawaddy dolphins. I’d never heard of these dolphins before, and after reading about them they sounded nothing like the image I usually have in my mind when I think of a dolphin. For a start, they can be quite pale and even pink in colour and they don’t have a bottle nose, just a rounded head. I basically had the mental image of a giant sperm and I wasn’t too far wrong. But joking aside, these dolphins are nearing extinction and there are only around 80 left in the world.
Just look at this one’s cute little face!

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The Four Thousand Islands are one of the few places that you can go out and actually see some of these dolphins, so we decided to take a sunset trip in the hope of some sightings. We turned up at the small village next to the river and hired a boat and driver, we shared with some nice French guys so it only cost £2.50 each, bit of a bargain. The boat driver’s kids came along too, they were extremely cute and were absolutely fascinated with my camera, they also loved a good pose.

Sibling love:

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He’s on a BOAT (I’d like to think this song by The Lonely Island was in his head as he posed – watch it here: http://m.youtube.com/watchv=dvMt9C4DPu8&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdvMt9C4DPu8):

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We spotted around 6 dolphins, all around 20 metres away. It was a pretty cool experience but we didn’t get close enough to really see them in detail. They were also really quick, so we didn’t cature many on camera.

This is one of the best photos we got (and it ain’t that great – sorry!):

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We also took this pretty cool photo of a stork in the sunset. It’s not a dolphin but it IS wildlife, hope you like it!

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After our hour was up, we hopped back on our bikes and cycled the bumpy road back to our hut. Next stop – Cambodia!

Debbie
xx

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