Mekong Cruise - Day 4

---

We were up on the sun deck this morning just after 7.00am so that the immigration official could check our faces against our passports. The officer checking our faces actually had a sense of humour which is a most unusual trait amongst immigration officials! He looked at me, looked at my passport and announced ‘very beautiful’. Given that he also said this to Steve, he may not have been very discerning in regard to the standard of western feminine beauty, ha, ha, ha?? Anyhow, all of us were verified and cleared for entry to Cambodia.

After breakfast we boarded cyclos for our ‘smoke free’ tour of Phnom Penh City and set off into the city with our Cambodian guide, Leng. Spelled Leng, but he pronounced his name as ‘Ling’ to my ear. Our itinerary said that we were to visit the Silver Pagoda within the palace compound but, unfortunately, the palace complex has not yet reopened. We were taken instead to Wat Phnom Daun Penh, a Buddhist temple built on the site of a 14^th-century pagoda.

The Wat Phnom Daun Penh is the tallest religious structure in the city and considered the most significant of all the temples in Phnom Penh. The sanctuary was founded by Daun Penh (Grandma Penh), a wealthy widow who, in 1372, retrieved a log from the river with four Buddha statues and one Vishnu statue in it. She had a piece of her property elevated to 27 metres and had a temple built apon it to house the statues. The site has been further developed and renovated over the centuries and when King Ponhea Yat arrived in 1434 to build a city he named it Phnom Penh. When he died, a massive stupa was added behind the temple to enshrine his ashes. The total height of the wat, including the structures atop it, is 46 metres.

After another short ride in our cyclos we disembarked near the Independence Monument. This 37-metre tall tower was built in 1958 to celebrate Cambodia gaining its independence from France in 1953. It stands on a roundabout at the intersection of Norodom Boulevard and Sihanouk Boulevard. It is in the unusual form of a lotus-shaped stupa, a style seen in the temple of Banteay Srei and other Khmer historical sites.

In the park east of the Independence Monument we found the Norodom Sihanouk Memorial. It is also known as the Statue of King Father Norodom Sihanouk indicating the esteem in which the former King was held. Much of this is due to Sihanouk liberating the country from French colonial rule in 1953. Completed in 2013, the year after his death, the statue is made of bronze and stands 4.5 metres tall within a stupa that is 27 metres tall. The statue depicts the late King wearing a business suit and cost US$1.2 million to build.

We clambered back into our cyclos for another short ride to the palace complex. With the site still closed we were only able to walk along the wall that faces the river and includes the dancing hall. We only caught a glimpse of the roofs of the other buildings inside the compound. Fortunately, Bernie and I were able to visit the palace when we were in Phnom Penh in 2010 so we have photos from our earlier visit.

A short walk from the palace found us at the National Museum of Cambodia. The museum houses traditional Khmer and religious artefacts in a building built in the 1920s in a style inspired by temple architecture. After some negotiation between Leng and the staff it was agreed that we would be able to take photographs with our mobile phones, but not with our cameras. None of us were quite sure of the reasoning behind that, but we were happy to be able to take any photos as we have no photos of the interior from our earlier visit. Photography must have been completely forbidden at that time.

Leng took us on a quick circuit of the rooms that surround the central courtyard doing an excellent job of explaining the gods represented and their places in Khmer history. There were only a handful of other visitors to the museum so we had the complex almost to ourselves. With their lunchtime closing time approaching the attendants were turning off the lights in each room as we moved through to the next room!

Our cyclo drivers were wearing tops with their number on the left breast and we had been told to look for the driver we had been allocated each time we returned to our cyclos. Ever efficient though, the drivers were much quicker to identify us each time we arrived to reboard their vehicles. After the National Museum our cyclo drivers delivered us safely back to our boat. Then there was the dilemma of how much to tip. Leng had told us that Pandaw has already paid the company on our behalf, including a tip for the drivers BUT, if we wanted to give them anything extra that was between us and our driver. It is one thing to WANT to tip the driver, it is another thing entirely trying to work out what a fair tip is?? At US$1.00 I think my tip may have been considered to be on the mean side especially when others were tipping US$5.00!! Before we left the museum perhaps the group should have agreed the ‘correct’ amount in consultation with Leng so we would at least have been consistent?!

This afternoon Pandaw offered a coach excursion to visit the Killing Fields Memorial at Choeung Ek and the S21 Genocide Museum housed in a former school that was used as a detention centre during the regime of the Khmer Rouge. Having visited these sites in 2010 we decided that we would prefer not to go again. Last time we were in Phnom Penh we decided to visit both sites as a mark of respect to the generation of Cambodians who were detained and murdered by Pol Pot’s soldiers in the late 1970s.

Bernie wanted to go out to the Russian Market this afternoon, but the rest of us convinced him that we should have a restful afternoon before going to the night market tonight and then visiting the Russian Market in the morning. Just before writing this Cathy, Steve and I asked our Purser what time we would be sailing tomorrow morning. Hmmn, there has been a change to the itinerary and due to a combination of low bridges and high water levels we will actually be departing at 6.30am, yes, that’s AM so, early in the morning rather than around lunch time as we had thought. It might have been nice to know that at lunchtime today rather than finding out closer to 5.00pm??

Tonight’s cocktail was an Amaretto Sour and our entertainment consisted of a troupe who performed several traditional dances before staging a story told by shadow puppets. The hand, arm and foot posturing in the dances is extreme. They need to start training when there are about eight-years-old and complete stretches and exercises daily to achieve the flexibility they need. The shadow puppets are a simple but effective method of story telling and we were lucky to have the performance in English to make it really easy to follow the story.

After dinner we headed down the gangplank. We had been told we must return to the boat by 11.00pm if we go off the boat in the evening. Our programme sheet for the day included the Purser’s mobile number for us to ring if we missed the curfew so that he could come to the night security gate and negotiate with the security guards to let us in. Of course, Bernie joked to the Purser as we were about to leave that we would call him at 1.30am! I do worry about him cracking jokes with people whose first language is not English. I often have trouble understanding his humour, especially whether he is joking or serious, how are they going to cope?!

We had decided that even though the night market is quite close we would take a tuk tuk. We thought that we would have to walk out to the street to engage one but, no, as soon as the first person’s foot touched the dock a tuk tuk swooped up to us. How much to go to the night market? Five dollars we were told. Is that each or for all of us? Four people, five dollars. OK!

Safely delivered to the market we were on a mission to find a webbing or fabric belt for Bernie. The leather belt that he has been wearing for many years without any problem has been reacting with his copious amount of sweat and the waistband of his light coloured shorts and creating a really nasty stain on the waistband. First though, we completed a circuit checking out the street food available at the market. The food looks really colourful and delicious BUT I’m quite sure it is not a good idea for us to sample it! Fortunately we weren’t tempted because our tummies were well and truly full from the onboard dinner we had enjoyed before coming out.

Without too much of a hunt, Bernie found a stall selling the sort of belt he was after. After checking that it was going to be long enough to fit around his middle he had the skull buckle changed over for a star and then, at US$2.50 each, he splurged on a second belt with a tiger buckle.

With our purchase made we headed back to the street and organised another tuk tuk back to the port for the same price. You could say it was a cheap night out!



Steps for the day: 7,142 (4.61km)

---