Experience Cambodia away from the tourists. Photo / Alexander on Unsplash
A cruise along the Mekong River enables Joanne Karcz to discover a side to Cambodia most travellers miss.
Gliding along the Mekong River’s waters, thick with life-giving silt, children call out from the riverbank and ferries carry workers astride motorbikes from shore to shore. I watch as parents with one or two young children and fishermen, alone or in small groups, chug along in long wooden boats. Four men, balancing on the edge of their boat, reach hand over hand to haul in a heavy red net.
A couple of fishermen wave enthusiastically. Daily life on the river passes me by as I stand looking out from the teak-lined sundeck of our charming ship, the Toum Tiou II. Being small, this 14-cabin ship can venture down tributaries and shallow waters. It is able to access to a rural Cambodia seldom seen by visitors.
READ MORE: Visit Siem Reap, Cambodia’s charming gateway city to Angkor Wat.
Many of the staff on board are from local villages. They, like the people we meet on daily shore excursions offered by CF Mekong’s New Discovery Cruise, are happy to share their culture and stories with guests.
Wobbling at first on a cycling excursion, I ride eight kilometres to a little village. Dismounting, I join our small group in the cool shade underneath Mr Ry’s home.
Ry climbs palm trees for his living. Wearing a faded polo shirt, blue cotton shorts and a broad brimmed hat, he ties a red and white checked krama (the long Cambodian scarf, pronounced “crumb are”, has multiple uses) around his waist to form a belt. Two bamboo cylinders blackened with smoke dangle from the krama, which also secures a knife and scabbard.
At 72, he is a small wiry man with a broad smile. Wearing only thongs on his feet, Ry steps lithely onto the first rung of a simple bamboo ladder wired to a tall palm tree. Within minutes he has disappeared into the palm fronds 30m above my head. When he reappears, he’s walking agilely across a bamboo pole stretched between two palm trees, the bamboo cylinders heavy with palm sap.
He descends nimbly and leads us to a shelter. There, he levers the lid off a 20-litre plastic container. Dipping a “spoon” made from a palm frond into said container, he offers me a taste of thickened golden syrup. Made by heating palm sap over a fire for many hours, it has a granular texture and rich molasses-like taste.
Ry has always climbed trees. When he was 18, he “hid from the Khmer Rouge by climbing trees at night”, he explains through our interpreter/guide. Of his nine siblings, five survived the atrocities. Dragging a finger across his throat he adds: “The others... I’d need all day to tell my story.”
Sophat is Ry’s neighbour. She makes cooking pots using a technique passed down through her family for generations.
She slaps a lump of clay down onto a post cut from the trunk of a palm tree. With a fist thrust into the centre of the firm moist clay and barefoot, Sophat walks quickly around and around the post, repeatedly patting the outside of the clay with a flat wooden paddle. She has effectively become a human potting wheel.
Within minutes, Sophat holds a finished clay cooking pot for all to see. As a young woman, she made “50 to 100 pots a day,” she says. Now she makes about 20. A middleman “comes to the village to buy my pots. He pays 25c each”.
Another day, I find myself sitting comfortably on a rice sack on an ox cart. The large wooden wheels slowly grind along the dirt road. Ox bells ring rhythmically. Children in crisp white shirts and blue skirts peddle furiously, racing the carts as we enter the Pothi Rokha Ram pagoda.
In the temple, faded murals decorate the thick concrete walls. Colourful woven mats cover the cool red and white diagonally chequered floor. Novice monks peer inquisitively through the open windows. A senior monk, head shaven and wearing an orange robe, blesses us each in turn. I’m instructed to keep the red thread tied around my wrist until it falls off.
We leave the temple on bikes, riding over rough sandy tracks past lush green rice paddies and ponds filled with white lotus flowers, their petals edged in pink. In another village, fishermen pluck shiny silver fingerlings, their morning catch, from their nets. Having no common language isn’t a barrier, and we laugh and joke together.
At Oudong market, whole fish cook on skewers over hot coals. Vendors mostly ignore us as we discover what makes up Cambodian “fast food”. There are crisp fried shrimp cakes flavoured with tamarind, bowls of salted crab, frogs stuffed with pork, snake heads, and yellow and black turtles a little larger than my outstretched hand. A veritable feast, but one I’ll leave for the locals to enjoy.
Seeing Angkor Wat and the killing fields is a unique experience. But on a cruise down the Mekong River, I was able to delve into the richness of Cambodian culture.
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Phnom Penh International Airport with Air NZ and Singapore Airlines, with one stopover at Singapore Changi Airport. Alternatively, fly with Malaysian Airlines with one stopover in Kuala Lumpur.
DETAILS
Joanne Karcz travelled as a guest of CF Mekong.
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