Travel deep dive
The Mekong: River Towns and the Irrawaddy Dolphins
Most visitors to Cambodia see the Mekong only where it meets Phnom Penh, at the confluence the capital is built around. Upstream, the river shapes a different Cambodia entirely — slower towns, fishing villages, and one of the last strongholds anywhere of the critically endangered Irrawaddy dolphin. This stretch rewards visitors willing to add a day or two of travel that most itineraries skip.
Updated 2026-08-15
Kratie and the Irrawaddy Dolphins
Kratie, a quiet riverside town roughly halfway between Phnom Penh and the Laos border, is the country's main access point for spotting the Mekong's Irrawaddy dolphins — a freshwater population now critically small and still declining, hunted and squeezed by dam construction and fishing-net entanglement across the river's length. A short boat ride from town, launched from Kampi village, is the standard way to see them, and sightings are genuinely likely rather than a long-shot hope, though never guaranteed on any single trip.
The dolphins themselves surface briefly and irregularly rather than performing, which suits the low-key, patient character of a Kratie visit generally: the town itself is small, walkable, and set up for a night or two rather than a rushed day trip, with a riverside promenade that makes an easy evening on its own.
Kampong Cham and the Bamboo Bridge
Kampong Cham, a larger river town closer to Phnom Penh, has one genuinely unusual claim: each dry season, when the Mekong's level drops enough, villagers rebuild a bridge to Koh Paen island entirely from bamboo, wide enough for motorbikes and light vehicles, dismantled again before the following wet season floods return. It is rebuilt from scratch most years, which makes its exact condition and opening genuinely seasonal rather than a fixed, checkable date.
Koh Paen itself is a quiet farming island, easily circled by bicycle in a couple of hours, and Kampong Cham's own riverside is lined with a mix of French colonial-era buildings and newer development, giving the town a workaday, unpolished character distinct from Cambodia's more visited stops.
Getting There and Fitting It In
Both towns sit on the main road north from Phnom Penh, Kampong Cham the closer of the two and an easy half-day trip on its own, Kratie further on and better suited to an overnight stay. Travelling between them and back to Phnom Penh, or continuing further north toward Stung Treng and eventually the Laos border, is straightforward by road, and this stretch works well either as a deliberate one-to-two-day loop from the capital or as the overland route north for anyone continuing into Laos rather than flying.