Cruise Planners - On The Road - Sailing on Ama Dara on the Mekong River Delta

One of the things we love about Ama Waterways River Cruises is the full (completely inclusive) itinerary they put on for you.  With local guides at each stop to explain history and culture, you learn so much about the places you are visiting. Meanwhile, the chefs aboard are creating local delicacies for lunch and dinner - it really is a 360 degree travel experience...  Following will be blog entries on each stop we made along the way: Kampong Chhnang, Ko Chen, Oudong, Kampong Tralach, Phnom Penh, Tan Chau, Sa Dec, Cai Be, My Tho, and Ho Chi Minh City.

First up, Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia...

Kampong Chhnang is at the southern tip of the big lake (Tonle Sap Lake). Siem Reap is at the Northwest tip of the same lake.

Ama Dara anchored mid-stream and small local boats came out to pick up the excursion groups.  Each group had their own local, English speaking guide and each guest had a small headset giving you the ability to hear your guide from 50'.

Ama Dara anchored mid-stream

Boarding our boats

Beautiful Tourists

Leaving Ama Dara to see Floating Village

We headed south and then turned east into a channel leading us to Kampong Chhnang.  Kampong Chhnang is a combination of Floating Village and small shoreside town.

Shoreside Town

Floating Village

We spent most of our time taking a close look at how a floating village is built, what it is composed of, and the lives of people who spend their lives afloat.

Taxi

So, if you live in a floating village, there has to be a floating equivalent of Uber, right? Depicted above is a mom and her son being taxied from one side of the floating village to the other.

Bamboo used to float the village homes

The homes, stores, meeting halls, and businesses making up the float village which encompassed both banks of the river are essentially homes built in place on top of long bamboo logs that form the primary floating foundation for the homes.  According to our guides, the individual bamboo logs (stalks?) are replaced every 2-3 years as they become water logged and begin to rot.  You can also see the bamboo is supplemented by more modern floatation aids in the form of blue or white plastic barrels lashed under the home floors alongside the bamboo.

One of our tour boats

Floating Main Street

Fish are a major component of their diet

Ferry from one side of the river to the other

So you might ask, who are these folks who live on the river and what's their story?  According to our guide, the majority of these folks are ethnic Vietnamese who have been there in many instances for more than one generation.  Those born in Cambodia receive citizenship papers but as is often the case, if you are different, there is a level of prejudice present even after so many years.  The reason these folks initially started living on the river is that they immigrated from Vietnam and found that living on the river was a lot cheaper than trying to buy and build a home ashore.  

After a two hour two, we headed back to Ama Dara in time for lunch - and oh what a lunch...  

"Action Station"

The finished product - Yuuummm

We started enjoying noodle soups for breakfast and lunch when we arrived in Bangkok.  We are sure that having soup for breakfast and lunch aboard Ama Dara is a key reason we both lost weight for the first time on a cruise - it wasn't as if we weren't eating a ton - because we were - and enjoying every bit of it.  But I think the soup just tended to fill us up and keep our appetite satisfied better than what we typically eat for breakfast and lunch here at home.

Leaving Kampong Chhnang

Beautiful view from our sun deck cabin

Pastoral scene along the river

After lunch, we headed south on the river, bound for Koh Chen and our afternoon tour ashore.  Koh Chen is a small village on the banks of the Mekong that is known for its silver smithing.  A number of families in town have passed their craft from generation to generation - we visited one of these families and were introduced to their craftsmanship - and how to tell Sterling silver from plated silver.

Our guide Sophia explaining how things are made

Everyone in the family has a skill

After our visit to the silver shop, we took a walk through the village to the local elementary school.  Here at the school, the teacher introduced us to the kids and our guide helped serve as an interface between the kids and cruisers. It was a really wonderful experience -- education beyond grade school is still a big deal in rural Cambodia - but these kids had a ton of enthusiasm for learning.  How do you learn about cultures when you travel?  You walk out into their villages and start to learn how they live, how they learn, and how they eat.  This was a wonderful day starting our Cambodian education.

Class welcomes us

Valerie talking with a rapt audience of young girls - they were able to keep up a pretty decent conversation in English - amazing to think about in a small village on the Mekong Delta.

Good shot of the headsets we used to listen to our guide's stories.

Cruise Planners - On the Road - Embark Day and a Fear Factor, Road Trip White Out...

So August 17th, 2015 has finally arrived...  Been planning our inaugural cruise about Ama Dara since November 2014 and now - Lake and River water levels are down - bus trip is up...

Mr. Son - our Ama Waterways Cruise Director gathered and processed everyone in the lobby of the Sofitel with a minimum of effort and stress.  We were all assigned to one of four colors - blue, yellow, green, and orange - which corresponded to ribbons on our bags and the bus we would be boarding for the 5.5 hour bus trip from Siem Reap to our low water boarding area at Prek Dam.

Gathering in the Lobby

The buses were comfortable and each had their own Ama Waterways tour guide to fill us in along the way - talking about the various areas, how it was growing up in Cambodia and stories shared from their parents about the bad times in Cambodia.

The countryside along the way was very pastoral

Along the way we were introduced to the term "Happy House", as in "We will have Happy House stop in 2 1/2 hours..."  We were also introduced to "Road Massage" and finally to the concept of dust white outs on the highway.  Happy House as you might have guessed is the Cambodian term for comfort stop.  Our first stop was at a road side cafe - gave us our first view of the Tonle Sap Lake.

Tonle Sap Lake as seen from our first Rest Stop

I think that Road Massage and White Outs are very closely related.  We had been warned that the road got a little rough - which was absolutely true.  Seems like road work in Cambodia proceeds at glacial pace or not at all. One side of the road would be paved; the other would be dust, dirt, and pot holes and with the amount of traffic on the road throwing up the dust, there were times when you literally could not see 10 feet in front of the bus - since we were right behind the driver and could see what he (couldn't be) was seeing, this is not an exaggeration.  We couldn't believe it the first time it happened so we didn't get a picture - after the first time, we had the camera ready - this picture doesn't do justice to what it looked like because you can still actually see the bus in front of us.

This looks more like a Brown vice White Out

After another 90 minutes, we had our second stop - aka the Spider stop.  After a good amount of Road Massage, the line to the Happy House was plenty long.  Once everyone was done, the Fear Factor Follies began...  

Crickets, Tarantulas, Assorted Bugs anyone?

Several passengers and one of our guides had a snack

About 45 minutes later, just as the sun started to play hide and go seek with a few rain clouds, we caught our first glimpse of the Ama Dara, moored bow first on the river bank.  This was our first indication that river cruising on the Mekong will be a little different than on the Danube or Mosel in Europe.

Ama Dara moored on the bank

As soon as our buses pulled up, the embarkation party and celebration began with a celebratory Dragon dance to chase evil spirits away and guarantee us smooth sailing.  Our gang way is actually extended from the ship directly onto the river bank - no pier at all - mooring lines were attached to trees along the river bank.  Worked really well but our crew had to work pretty hard to pull the mooring lines through the trees and reeds to get them attached.

Dragon Dance

Ama Dara gangway

Our sail-away was smooth and we headed north on the Tonle Sap...

Brown Water cruising...

Sun Deck was a great place to watch our sail away

The natural beauty of the Lake and River at sunset

After our obligatory life jacket and emergency procedures drill, we all gathered in the Saigon Lounge for our Welcome Aboard greeting.  We had colorful local dances, the Captain's introduction of his crew, and a personal welcome by our host, Ama Waterways CEO, Rudy Schreiner.  After the festivities, it was time for our first dinner aboard and a restful night's sleep anchored mid-stream on the river.

Welcome dance by Cambodian troupe

Cruise Planners - On the Road - Socially Conscious Entertainment in Siem Reap - Phare

On our second night in Siem Reap, after a long day touring the Temples of Angkor, we headed out via Tuk Tuk to the Circus.  Circus in Cambodia?  Christian at the Shinta Mani had recommended Phare - as good entertainment perspective with a socially conscious theme.  A school for young Cambodians to learn skills for the entertainment industry with performance profits plowed back into the community to educate and train more young people.

http://www.pharecambodiancircus.org/circus/

How often do you get a chance to be entertained and know you are doing good at the same time? We paid for VIP seating - $35 each - and it was money well spent.

Phare Poster

The circus was in a big top tent and the show itself was a combination of comedy, music, dancing, balancing, aerials, and juggling - with everything including the live music done by Phare performers.  There were 9 performers in the cast - three musicians and six athletes - and they were all pretty much on stage the entire performance.  A high energy production...

The Show's Stage

What came next was a 90 minute, non-stop show with innovative use of "junk" for percussion instruments (car doors and the like) and performers who were alternately actors and performers as they wove a story line around their physical feats.  Make no mistake, these kids are professional performers who exhibited strength, flexibility, and balance throughout their show -- I would put them on par with the best "Cirque" style act I have seen on a cruise ship.  The production might have been a little less elaborate but the actual acts were certainly as good.  If you are in Siem Reap, or perhaps have the opportunity to see Phare when they go on the road (which they do from time to time), go see the show, you will thoroughly enjoy yourself and contribute to continuing this worthy effort.

After returning via Tuk Tuk to the Shinta Mani Club -- and our waiting cold, scented towel and bottled waters, we got a restful night's sleep for our embarkation aboard Ama Waterways Ama Dara the next day.

Cruise Planners - On the Road - The Temples of Angkor

Ever since seeing the movie, "Lord Jim" in the mid-60's, Angkor Wat has been on my list of mysterious places to see.  Of course, seeing Angelina Jolie cavort around the self same temples as Lara Croft didn't diminish my interest either.

So when we decided to take Ama Waterways Ama Dara's inaugural Mekong River cruise last November, we knew we'd have to put seeing the temples on our list of Pre-cruise activities.

Now, to be honest, we didn't do a lot of pre-planning or reading to figure out how we were going to see them - we figured that once we got there, we'd ask a local.  Our local in this case was the General Manager of our hotel, the Shinta Mani Club, Christian DeBoer.  Christian immediately put us in contact with Mr. Chin Reaksmey (+855 12 704 985; sunshinelok2003@yahoo.ca ; facebook [ soriye malen)  Mr Chin was definitely the key to unlocking the doors of Angkor for us.

Our Guide Mr. Chin

Our second day in Siem Reap (pronounced “C-M” “Rip”) was an all day tour of the glory of the 9th-15th Khmer capital known as Angkor Wat.  Angkor Wat was the center of an empire that once encompassed what we know today as Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos.  The Angkor era was also a time of religious ebb and flow - between Hinduism and Buddhism.  This religious dichotomy is reflected in the temples of the ancient capital being excavated by a multi-national UNESCO led effort to restore the Angkor Wat area.  

At 7:30am, we met our guide, Mr. Chin, at the Shinta Mani and headed to the Angkor Wat area.  We chose to take a car vice “Tuk Tuk” (open air motorcycle towed cart) and are so glad we did.  We are officially in the “rainy” season although we weren’t rained on at all - but the temperature is still in the low to mid-90’s with humidity raising the “Feels Like” temperature to 102 or so. Perfect golf weather for southwest Florida transplants, but after spending an hour or two at each of three temple areas baking in the overhead sun, having an air-conditioned car to move from site to site was well worth the additional cost (Total was $81 USD per person).  Having a nice cold bottle of water each time we got back into the car after each temple was so appreciated.

Mr Chin is very knowledgeable about Khmer history and a talented photographer who helped us record our day at the Temples of Angkor...

So, when is Discovery not Discovery? When what is “discovered" was previously known by mankind, does this really constitute discovery?  Or perhaps might we call it, Recovery, Re-discovery, Renewal, or Re-embracing the past?  This was the dilemma posed by realizing that Western (French) explorers who stumbled onto Angkor and "discovered it" in 1860 didn't find something that locals had forgotten about. In fact, locals had villages all over the grounds of the greater Angkor but the temples themselves were no longer used for shelter or worship.  Perhaps it is less about discovery and more about adding to the wider knowledge of mankind's shared history.

Of note is that while what we were seeing at Angkor were temples, this area was actually an area hosting a population of as many as 1 million people back in the day (9th to 14th centuries).  But homes, businesses, and palaces were built of wood, long since burned, decayed, or buried by time  and wars.  So Angkor was first and foremost a city although the artifacts most obvious today are all centered on religion.

First up, the Temple of Angkor Wat... We enjoyed picture perfect weather and skies.  Temperature was probably around 90F - hot but not too sticky - no a blood sucking insect to be seen.

We approached from the South - Opposite side from where most visitors enter

Iconic Picture

The walls tell the stories of the Khmer legends

The Super Monkey helping the Good King - later we would see this legend depicted in dance by a Cambodian Dance Troupe aboard Ama Dara 

Many locals leave offerings for Buddha's blessing

Exact center of the Temple looking up

Explaining how offerings are left for Buddha

Next up was Angkor Thom - approaching again from the South Gate whose entrance is flanked by 54 guardian statues....

Entrance to Angkor Thom

Part of the moat guarding the city walls

By now the sun was high and we were hungry and thirsty so Mr. Chin and our driver took us to a restaurant so we could rehydrate -- with Angkor beer and enjoy a delicious curry lunch.

Colorful restaurant at village near the Temples

Ahh, Cold Beer...

So after our lunch, it was on to our next temple, Ta Prohm -- made famous by Angelina Jolie -- we're going to have to get this one on Netflix to see how you turn an ancient temple into a movie set.

 

It is the trees that make Ta Phrom so iconic

As Hinduism and Buddhism struggled for supremacy, carvings like this one were recarved or edited to reflect the ascendant deities. 

So after 8 hours of touring three of the "5 Star" temples of Angkor, we headed back to the Shinta Mani.  Here we were greeted on arrival with scented, cold towels, and a cool drink.  Then it was off to the pool to chill out before getting ready for dinner and heading out to Phare which we'll cover in our next installment.