Day 14 - Mekong Cruise Day 3

After a night of poor sleep, I got up early and headed out of deck to do a few laps of their 106m track, just walking as I would not trust that deck/track to hold the weight of someone running on it. Out on deck were a couple of the crew doing their early morning Yoga session and one other guest ended up popping up on deck as well to get some photos.

I had breakfast and was joined by everyone else, before we got onto a smaller boat that yesterday's Sampan to cruise around the town of Tan Chau by river where we got off and caught a a Rickshaw to a silk Factory, the rickshaws we caught didn't have a top or a back to them and we're pretty small so you had to bend your knees pretty close and lean forward so you didn't fall off the back of it. It was impressive to see the machines that put the silk cloth together and the way it used the patterns weave it the right way to make the pattern, I couldn't help but think how it must kind of work a bit like how the old punch card computers did.

We continued on by a rickshaw to another factory, this one making saege mats, they showed how they made the mates as well as the dying of the straws, unlike the silk cloth manufacturing where the pattern was all done by machine, this one was done by the person themselves, remembering which colour straw needed to be loaded to get the right pattern. We then moved by foot back to the boat where we caught a boat to Evergreen Island to see the authentic rural Mekong life. Upon the island we were shown a number of plant crops which the locals grow to sell, as well as being introduced to one of the locals homes. We heard about the man who lived there and a little about his history, he use to be a paratrooper in the war, his originally house was a thatched house but was burnt down back in the 1970s. It was eventually rebuilt in the 1990s.

We headed back to Serenity before she crossed the border from Vietnam to Cambodia. Border control procedures were conducted while Yee was given his talk, apparently they checked the laundry and everything was fine there so they carried on and allowed us to continue on with our trip, we still have a facial confirmation with our passport to make sure we do look like our passport photo, but for the meantime we are good to go.

We spent a long time cruising on the boat this afternoon, so they had the chefs out doing a little bit of a cooking show before showing how to carve vegetables. The countryside was also rather lovely to watch as we cruised by so naturally I couldn't help snap a few pics. I decided to go for a small paddle in the pool, would love to say I went for a swim, but honestly, this pool would require about 3 strokes and I would touch the other side, I guess if I had done that I could at least say I had done many laps in such a short time. I evently got out of the pool, took a few photos of the sunset ting then had a quick shower before getting changed for dinner.

Tonight we dined in their fancy restaurant on board, our head waitress was Rachey who serves us for breakfast and lunch every day, she's a very bubbly personality and we all have good laughs with her. I was getting up from the table and she said Jonathan where are you going with a worried look on her face, I told her the bathroom... She took my hand and led me away from the table towards the bathroom hidden away in the restaurant and said to me "now don't spend too much time in my bathroom" and then walked away... I came back to the table to find out that apparently she said to the others, "he's very shy", the others all laughed. As for the meal itself, oh my, I can't comment enough on how good this meal was, honestly one of the best meals of my life, I'm not a soup person and I ate the soup, I actually ate it before anyone else had finished. And the beef, oh my God, cooked to perfection, you would eat it and it felt like it just melted away in your mouth. Honestly wish we could go back there tomorrow night, but our cruise only allows for one night at this restaurant. I actually forgot to take more photos of most of the meals as they would come out and I ended up just eating them.

After dinner, some went to bed, and some of us went up to the second floor to watch a documentary on Pol Pot, the Former Prime Minister of Cambodia, it talked a bit about his history and led up to talking about the killing fields, not a nice doco or a nice guy at all.