The day commenced with several guests taking an early morning walk around Phenom Penh with Photography Instructor Doug Loneman and Naturalist Martin Cohen.The walk finished overlooking a large tree full of hundreds of magnificent Lyle’s Flying-fox, or large fruit bats.
Back on board for breakfast as we cast off from Phenom Penh and spent the remainder of the day leisurely enjoying the sights from the comfort of the Jahan as we steamed downstream and into Vietnam.
Martin grew up in Melbourne Australia playing cricket and Australian Rules football. While growing up, to his parents’ dismay, Martin brought home and kept a menagerie of wildlife including frogs, lizards, turtles and even poisonous snakes!
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We hopped on sampans, local passenger boats, for a cruise to a small village on Binh Than Island to walk through local homes and learn about the process of weaving, drying, and exporting functional mats. At the local community center (which is also a colorful temple), we met with village elders for a short discussion about their lives and the area. Afterward, we did a leisurely cruise through the canals and got to witness the harvesting of water hyacinths, an invasive species common in the Mekong Delta. During the afternoon, we boarded sampans again to visit the island of Tan Phong to visit a group of women making baskets, souvenirs, and other items from water hyacinth. Then, we cruised around the town on six-seater golf carts for a scenic ride through the orchards. After boarding the sampans again, we headed to the small town of Phu An to visit a series of small workshops to see the production of a variety of items including rice paper, rice wine, and coconut candies. Everyone was able to sample the treats. Before dinner, the entire staff and crew of Jahan was introduced during our ship farewell cocktail hour and posed for photos.
After a full day of cruising down the Mekong as we approached the border with Vietnam, certain differences were immediately apparent. The amount of infrastructure and activity along the waterways is notably higher. The Mekong Delta is home to over 20 million people, and rice agriculture is still the backbone of the economy because the harvest serves both domestic and export markets. In addition, aquaculture is another ubiquitous aspect of this part of Vietnam. Thousands of floating houses line the riverbanks, each with a mesh cage beneath the surface; tilapia and basa are the most common species. We visited one of these houses and got a sense of this livelihood, oscillating with the tides. When we go ashore we see both the bustling wet markets of Chau Doc, and the more relaxed pace of the small farming village of My An Hung. Traditions still permeate all ways of life, with bicycle rickshaws, Mekong Delta blues music, and a live performance of the unicorn dance, that most auspicious of Vietnamese sacred animals. In the evening, Jahan weighs anchor and we continue downstream. Tonight we let our hair down, guests and crew alike, with a dance party and BBQ on the upper deck.
Up early this morning and off in our tuk-tuks for an optional photographic adventure! This morning we have 2 stops in mind, the first along the Tonle Sap River at Wat Ounalom. Cameras clicked and whirred as we walked around this beautiful Wat, with several monks dressed in their orange traditional regalia, posing along the way. Our second stop was at Wat Phnom in the interior portion of the city. Here, a beautiful staircase led up to an overview of the city with lots of ornate objects to photograph. Everyone was elated as we came back onboard Jahan in time for breakfast. Our afternoon was filled with a very interesting talk entitled, “Why Culture Matters, from Darkness into the Light” by our National Geographic cultural specialists Chris Rainier and Olivia McKendrick. A high tea was served in the late afternoon, followed by a transit of the Tan Chau Canal. This narrow canal offered us close-up views of life along the Mekong River. Our after dinner activity was a photo feedback session hosted by the photography team in the lounge. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day here in Southeast Asia!
