Day 18 - Mekong Cruise Day 7

Today was a rather quiet day, a day to get packed and relax a bit before we disembark Serenity for the last time tomorrow. While it was a quiet day we still had activities planned, the first one starting at 9am which meant an early breakfast of 7am. After last night I was pretty tired, I seem to have forgotten just how much dancing can take out of ya. Following breakfast it was time to get ready for our excursion, a morning walk to the hilltop pagoda of Wat Hanchey for expansive views over the

Mekong. It started with a flat walk before we reached the stairs, 300 stairs straight up, in my head I was just thinking they would be nice and shallow stairs, but as it goes up and up, they got steeper. While I hate running up hill, I do tend to like running up stairs on occasion, so I thought I'd give this one a good crack, I had to stop a 2 or 3 times, but certainly gave it a good crack, the last lot of stairs (the steepest section) I manafed to make all the way despite my legs begging me to stop, I got to the top and felt pretty well much done for the rest of the time up there.

There were many temples, pagodas, and stupas, some built this century while others date back to the eighth century. The newest of all the temples was built for someone who was sick and was due to die, miraculously once the temple was complete he made a full recovery, so now it is sitting there until his death. Once finishing up there it was time to head back to the ship, either by bus or we could walk down the stairs and back to the boat, those of you who know me know I love a dog downhill... I took the stairs, managed to get down in just over a minute while dodging other people.

We had our lunch on board with plenty of time to spare afterwards before climbing in a tuk tuk and travelling around the nearby agricultural island of Koh Pen. We travelled along the shaded lanes, past wooden stilted houses which are tucked among palm and sandalwood trees. We were introduced to a couple who were forced together to get married, this was not an arranged marriage like it is normally, but actually forced into it by the ragieme that was in place at the time. They now have 4 kids, they gave us a demonstration about how the marriage is carried out, by the man putting half the banana in his mouth and holding it in there, while the other half is peeled off and the woman taking the other half of the Banana after peeling it in her mouth. We headed back to the boat on the back of the tuk tuk, as we got back on we noticed some of the crew outside on shore enjoying something to drink and... Some ducklings, I would love to say they were just hard boiled eggs, but apparently not.

Getting back to the ship it was time to pay my final bill and then get my gear packed. I had actually already packed all my gear earlier in the day, so I was able to just relax and get ready to celebrate out last day/night on board the cruise ship. Prior to dinner, we had all 45 of the crew came out and we all cheered and clapped for them as a way to say thanks for all their work over our holiday break. We had a bit of discussion about what would happen for th next few days, tomorrow is going to be a busy one, despite we are on the bus for around 5 and a half hours. It was then off to have dinner, my meal took a little longer to prepare, Rachey said she asked for special one for me, the only difference I could see was the noodles were pink instead of white like everyone else's. After dinner it was time to go to bed.