27 Mar 2025 - Into Vietnam
We up anchor early in the morning and cruise downstream along the Mekong River to the Vietnam border for
immigration formalities.
Tai Chi, breakfast And then a free morning upon deck with just a tour of the ship at 10 am.
After lunch we met our new Vietnamese guide, Mac who David thought was a trifle verbose but his English was quite respectable.
The tempo of sand dredging increased as we approached the Cambodia/Vietnam Border
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| Passports taken ashore for stamping | Passports returned | ||
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After clearing immigration (we were not involved in at at all, the passports were sorted by the ship with the local authorities), we continued downstream
We drove in a bus to a temple complex which reputedly had 400 steps, but in the end I think we only did around 150. Mac had no idea on the physical capacities of some of his group and we found that we had to take our shoes off after about 60 steps up With which I was not too happy as I had removed my spare pair of socks by this time from the backpack: but Shane a kind Australian, lent me his socks so I managed to climb okay the view from the top would indeed have been splendid had visibility being slightly better
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Once down to the bottom of the hill, we visited a market for 10 minutes or so And then returned to the ship for just five minutes before boarding a sampan from the ship. This took us up the river past fish farms owned by individual families and we docked at a somewhat fragile jetty but managed to get off okay. Then through an alleyway to a shop where there was a spinning machine that several of the women passengers had a go at.
After that a walk along the road for some way before reaching a temple where there was a lion dance: this more spectacular than the previous one we had seen and somewhat shorter too.
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Then back on the sampan which had moved up river to where we were in the dusk. A cocktail up on deck then the briefing and then dinner where I had a sizzler, which was actually quite good. After this, we sat up on deck for some time with a fresh orange juice as we had already seen the film that was being shown this evening.