23 Mar 2025 - Siem Reap To The Mekong
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An invigorating swim before breakfast. David took the big suitcase down with us at 7:45 am to make sure we knew where the Pandaw desk was. Here once we found this, we were told that the suitcases needed to be there by 8 o’clock for an 8.15 start, whereas we had been told that it was 9 am or later from the information we had from the hotel the previous evening. The Pandaw guide spoke seemingly very little English. David was very annoyed by this but we went into breakfast and tried to eat this as quickly as possible, which was a great shame as it was such a beautiful setting. So we packed up and got down to the Pandow desk by 8:40 am only to find that several other customers were still missing, although at least one couple had been contacted at 7:45 am that morning to say that it was an earlier departure than anticipated.
We eventually took off on the coach soon after 9 am with just nine of us aboard, apparently another couple had missed their flight, maybe delayed by the fire that had put Heathrow out of action on the Friday. We were not impressed by the guide aboard as his English was so poor but eventually we realised that he was not going to be the guide aboard the ship we were about to board.
Interestingly we passed Pol Pot's birthplace along the way
After stopping for a comfort stop at a petrol station, we then stopped opposite another coach travelling in the opposite direction where our guide transferred to and a new guide, Sam came about our coach. He was much younger, 56 and his English was in fact better, particularly when speaking one to one.
Sam had been a child slave during Pol Pot regime, 1979 to 1983, and had lost several members of his family. He had then become a Buddhist monk for six years and the power of meditation has enabled him to cope with what he had suffered during those terrible years and when serving in the army during the ensuing Civil War. We stopped again for a snack, which was more of a meal, and to us completely unnecessary but was due apparently to the fact that we would not have lunch till as late as 1:30 pm.
Then yet another stop for a toilet before we eventually got to the boat, the Mekong Pandaw. at 1:30 pm and immediately had a pleasant lunch. The boat was moored at the riverside town of Steung Trang and cannot reach Siem Reap for much of the year because of low water levels in the river
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Then time to unpack and settle into our cabin, 301, very similar to that we had had the previous week but without any hooks in the cabin which have been so useful. At 4 pm we had an introduction to the boat in the lounge on the second floor. After this, we sat up on the upper deck at the front of the ship and read for an hour or so before cocktails at 6 pm and the setting of the sun over the Mekong River around the same time.
We ate as a table of nine at 7 pm and dinner was washed down with champagne as Nick and Kirsty had been married 20 years, but the meal itself was not of the same quality as that we had experience aboard the Pandaw and the previous week. We will wait to see whether it improves. We spent the meal talking to Shane and Lee from Australia.
Eventually, we left the dining room and went up on deck and enjoys a drink before retiring into bed.