Mekong Cruise - Day 6

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This morning after breakfast we disembarked in the bustling town of Kampong Cham and boarded a coach for a short drive to Phnom Pros Phnom Srei which translates as Man Mountain Lady Mountain. On the way Leng told us the legend of how the men and the women held a competition to see who could build the tallest hill and, of course, the women won thereby winning the right to have men take responsibility for proposing to them.

We drove part way up the smaller hill, Phnom Pros, where we visited the Buddha Garden. In addition to several statues of Buddha there is an impressive library, a number of other colourful buildings … and monkeys! Fortunately the monkeys didn’t seem very interested in us so we didn’t have to worry about them bothering us. Leng had warned us to stay well away from them as they have been known to jump on people thinking that a mobile phone could be a banana.

We continued to the top of Phnom Pros which is adorned with a pagoda and lots of stupas. Families have stupas erected on the hill to house the ashes of their family members. Usually there are many generations of the same family interred in a single stupa. Leng kept telling us that ‘Phnom Srei is just over there’ but, unfortunately, we really couldn’t see across to the pagoda on the other hill because there are still too many leaves on the trees. We imagine that, apart from being a little higher, the other hill pretty much mirrors the one we were on.

Our next stop was the village Cheong Kok. In 2005 the village entered into a partnership with French NGO Amica to found the first community-based tourism in Cambodia. In addition to growing rice the villagers supplement their agricultural income with handicrafts and tourism which helps to provide free education for 30 students, access to drinkable water and repairs to the roads after the wet season. Today the ‘other’ tour group (from an ugly white boat operated by Viking Tours) hijacked the teacher rather than our rowboats. Leng still did an admirable job taking us on a guided tour of another traditional Khmer village that nestles amongst the rice fields.

Our bus driver delivered us back to the river where we walked the gangplank to return to the R.V. Bassac Pandaw. Once again, the current high water level means that some of our docking arrangements have been … informal. When we return from our excursions we have to remove our shoes for cleaning and then we are welcomed aboard with cool washers, hand sanitizer and refreshing drinks. Some drinks have been much better than others. Yesterday’s passion fruit and soda has been a standout, today’s lemon tea, not so much!

Since our outing this morning we have been cruising upstream towards Kratie Province. We watched the river go by for about an hour before the lunch gong sounded. After lunch the weather looked quite threatening with heavy, black clouds hovering over the river and thunderstorms on the forecast. It turned out to be all for show though with only the tiniest sprinkle of rain falling. Just enough to make us move from the sun beds on one side of the boat to the other!

After lunch we were cruising along peacefully when we started to hear commentary coming over a loudspeaker. When we moved to the other side of the boat we could see a huge crowd of people gathered on the riverbank with this very excited commentary going on.There was a marker out in the river so we thought perhaps we were going to see half the crowd leap into the river to swim to the marker in some sort of race??

But no, we looked upriver and there were two dragon boats being paddled furiously towards the marker. They were very evenly matched too until one boat took on water and started to sink mere metres from the marker. As we cruised by we watched another two boats race past us both of them successfully finishing this time. We are unsure if all of the boats were in the same race or if we saw two heats? With the annual Water Festival on next month it could be that the provinces are holding heats to discover their strongest team to represent them in the capital in November? Leng has mentioned though that the annual festival could be interrupted by a planned visit by Putin to Cambodia.

Mid-afternoon we attended a presentation with Leng in the Movie Room titled ‘Cambodian Geography and Life Along the Mekong’. The presentation included history and geography as Cambodia’s borders have changed many times over the centuries as the Khmer Kingdom waxed and waned. There were some lovely photos and short videos of people living on the river. The one that cracked us up the most was two young boys playing rock, paper, scissors in he mud to determine which of them would get to slam his brother’s face into the mud!

Tonight’s cocktail was a Singapore Sling. As usual Cocktail Hour included our briefing for tomorrow and tonight’s news was very exciting. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we are going to be able to see some rare Mekong River dolphins during our morning excursion.

After dinner Steve and I went down to the Movie Room hoping to see the movie ‘The History of Pandaw’. When the movie started it had a very long introduction before the title rolled to say that it was actually ‘Deux Frere’ or ‘Two Brothers’. As we were about to leave we told the staff member that we had been expecting ‘The History of Pandaw’ which he told us ran last night! Since we were the only two in the Movie Room he said he could run it again tonight for us.

Hmmn, the movie was actually about the history of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company and was set in Burma. This related loosely to Pandaw only in that the beautiful teak boats in the fleet served as the inspiration for starting up Pandaw. It was still interesting to learn about the rise and fall of British interests in Burma. While they plundered the country for its gold and other minerals and timber, interestingly they left the country with more teak at the end of their occupation due to a strict reforestation policy. Of course, the trees were the only renewable resource, once the minerals were mined they were gone for good.



Steps for the day: 4,839 (3.05km)

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Comments

[RENanDREW]

SE Asia
I have seen your blogs on the front page recently and have been waiting to find a block of time to read through them. I'm intrigued by your trip along the Mekong, it looks much higher and more its normal brown colour than when we were on it in Laos in January 2020. Looking forward to reading the rest of your blogs :)

[Trabern]

The river runs deep …
The river is very high at the moment and the mud/silt has not settled out of the water following the wet season. We were told it would be clearer in a month or so. The river is so high that our itinerary had to be modified as there are bridges that our boat would not fit under yet! Going with the flow, so to speak.