Woken up by screaming school children at 7am this morning, looked out the window to see were it was coming from, there is a classroom directly opposite our room. About 2 metres away is say! Typical. I don't think they learn anything because all they do is scream and shout. There isn't a bell ring and they all go to class sit down and learn.

It gave me shivers a little because the school building looked the same as the S21 torture prison in Phnom Penh because that was a school before it was turned into a torture prison. The kids used to run around happy and screaming like these ones were.
We had breakfast on the rooftop with a view, over looking the mekong river.
We hired bicycles from the guesthouse and rode alongside the mekong river, the bikes were the old fashioned ones with baskets in the front, they were alright apart from them feeling as though they were going to break every time you pedalled and my brakes barely worked, however you could hear Scott a mile away when we braked, they were so noisy! Some WD40 wouldn't have gone a miss!

The country side was lovely, it's quiet and relaxed. No one is in a rush and you definitely get the vibe that every one knows everyone. All the houses are on stilts whether they're shacks or big wooden houses. Surely the Mekong river doesn't flood that much? Because these houses are nearly sky scrapers. But hey, these houses would be worth a bob or two if a tycoon came in and wanted to build, the views of the river are gorgeous and the sun sets on the opposite side of the river so it's even nicer in the evening! But somehow I don't think that's going to happen.
It doesn't look like a very wealthy area, behind all the houses there are endless fields, there's a lot of farming in the area, maybe that's why. Farming at home can be a high paid job but here they're literally on the bottom of the hierarchy. There are chickens everywhere and a lot more cows than we have seen anywhere else as well. There were kids everywhere shouting 'hello' and waving their hands rigorously, some would stand on the side and high 5 the four of us! They're all so cute when they're little!
The roads weren't very good, half of the way was one concrete path which had pot holes everywhere and lumps and bumps. The other half had a stones dirt track on the one side and concrete the other, well we just kept riding on the right side of the concrete path, although we realised on the way back that we should have been driving on the dirt path because we were driving smack bang in the middle of the road. Good job all that passed us were a few old bangers and a lot of mopeds and bicycles!
It was one direct road to Kampi, the next town up where we can see the dolphins.

We stopped along the way a few times to grab some water, and at the same time getting harassed by little kids wanting to say hello and high 5 us.
We stopped off at the rapids in Kampi, there are lots of little grass verges and islands in the river which is making the river stream faster and with more power. There are a few little rapids there, definitely no white water rafting going on here though! There were lots of thatched huts in the water with hammocks on, you has to pay 15 cent to get in - breaking the bank I know! We chilled in the hammocks, tried to bring our numb bums back to life. The water was gorgeous you could go swimming in it but we didn't pack our costumes.you could have a 'picnic' on the river, there were huts on the hill that were bringing menus around so that you could buy dinner and they would serve it you on the rapids, the menu was all in thai and the locals didn't speak any English. He was doing a dolphin or fish gesture so we give it a miss because we didn't really fancy fish or dolphin curry.

About 3pm we set off back down the road to the dolphin boat ride. It was $7 each so we thought we were being ripped off a little but we were adamant we wanted to see the dolphins. Our boat was a little fishing boat with a wind up engine and the driver had a paddle so that when we were close to the dolphins they'd paddle, not to have the engine scare them away.
As soon as we pulled off there were dolphins everywhere. They were all coming up for air through their blow holes, a few were playing together. Not coming out of the water completely but enough for us to either see their flat faces or their tails, either one.
We had the old experienced guy, where as a few other boats had some young guys so when we had dokphins near to us our engine would be turned off but some of these guys where zooming straight up to where we were watching them and scare them away, one went straight through the pod of dolphins. Bloody hopeless, no common sense! Some of the dolphins were huge and quite a few came fairly close to the boat, not good enough for a photo though because they weren't out of the water long enough.
We thought a few of them were playing with each other, I was ready for an acrobatic jump in the air but they were catching fish, of course it's tea time, they go up stream to find the fish in the evening, that's why it's better to seem them at this time.
We weren't particularly ripped off because we were out there for about an hour or so!

Back on the crooked old bikes for the bike ride back. It took use nearly two hours to get here so we are hoping it won't take as long on the way back, our bums are starting to get sore.
A young school girl came up from behind me on her bicycle, I think she was trying to practice her English because she was asking us our names and trying her best to pronounce things like school and house. She was sweet, they all look so smart in their 3/4 length navy skirts and white blouse. Most of them ride their bicycles to school but you do see the odd 10 year old jumping on his moped with his friends on the back. And we think we have problems of blu racers in our country. They have them here too and they start them a lot younger then!
The road seemed to never be ending and it was more painful to stand up and readjust the buttocks because the pain would release.

Finally after about an hour an half we made it back and the last stretch had better road surfacing so it wasn't as hard on the ole bums.

As soon as we got back a sit down on the comfy chairs and an Angkor beer went down way too nicely and quickly, I think Scott's Fanta did too! Haha.
It didn't take us long to get ready and go straight out for food, we hadn't eaten since breakfast.
We realised that we had rode 34km today, it's not that bad of a journey... If the roads weren't full of pot holes and loose stones and constantly bumpy, the seats weren't like sitting on rocks and it wasn't 35 degrees!
It was a fun day though, it's nice not seeing built up areas and big buildings or lots of traffic. It's really quiet around here which is nice.


We head for a super early night knowing that even though it's Saturday tomorrow there will be school kids screaming and shouting tomorrow because they don't give in.