I finally transferred my Cambodia-Vietnam-Thailand photos from my cameras to my computer, and from my computer to a special site where I can post them. At first I wanted to write some kind of mega-report, but then I realized I’d never get around to it. So I’m just going to post interesting photos little by little. So. I really wanted to catch a crocodile. Well, if not catch one, then at least see one in the wild. Since we spent most of our trip traveling along rivers—primarily the Mekong—I thought that was entirely realistic. And in the end, there were crocodiles. When we were traveling from Phnom Penh to Saigon. **By bus. **So there we were, standing at a gas station. Suddenly a girl from our group comes running up with a wild scream: "Lyosha! Lyosha! Crocodiles!" (by that point, of course, the whole group already knew that I desperately needed to see them). I ran out. Went around behind the gas station. The crocodiles looked like this:
They brought them in a van and literally transferred them onto a huge cart like something out of a supermarket. They handled them like logs. Swing them out of the truck bed, and—thump—into a pile. An actual pile. One row lengthwise. The next crosswise.
As it turned out, crocodiles there are like chickens are back home. And a crocodile farm isn’t a tourist attraction, but something more like one of our poultry farms. They breed them on an industrial scale and handle them accordingly. And they’re breeding a genuinely dangerous species of crocodile there (I don’t remember the exact name). Our guide told us that this is the kind of crocodile that attacks people most often. And when he takes groups to Borneo, everyone gets seriously tense walking through the mangroves (basically forests growing in water), because every year there are dozens of recorded attacks and deaths. Though in 99% of cases it’s farmers, not tourists. So they’re unloading these crocodiles, and suddenly one of them remembered that it was a crocodile, not a log. And it threw a real fit. Started lashing everyone with its tail, tore the burlap off itself. In short, it went completely berserk. The photo didn’t come out very well, but you can tell it’s making a scene.
The Vietnamese guys immediately jumped out of the truck bed. But then they had a quick huddle. Came up with a plan to subdue the poor beast. The four of them climbed back in, and about three minutes later they were dragging it out by its little green arms:
Oh, and I forgot to add: their snouts were taped shut, otherwise loading them would have been just a bit more difficult ))
But I never did get to see crocodiles in the Mekong. In the Vietnamese part, they’re simply gone. There are too many people. Everyone wants to eat. And crocodiles are worth money. So they were all caught. In the Cambodian part, apparently there are still some left, but very few, and only in some hard-to-reach tributaries. So if you go there, swim without worrying.