Mekong Diaries Day 60

Mar 112010
 

Day 60

Today we caught a bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, where we arranged for the next stage of our journey downstream to Viet Nam by boat. A ferry service runs twice each way every day, carrying tourists through a stretch of river with an amazing history.

Cambodia’s rulers moved its capital from Angkorian Siem Reap to the junction of the Tonle Sap and the Mekong when trade began to replace agriculture as the engine of national wealth and influence.

Since then boats have been making there way upstream through the mouths of the Mekong Delta to the lands of the Khmer and beyond.

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Mekong Diaries Day 59

Mar 112010
 

Day 59

As if we must punish ourselves for having too much fun in a previous incarnation, we book in for a 4am rise and visit a pre-dawn fish market on the shores of the Great Lake. It is surprisingly cold in the blank darkness as we park on the side of a long man-made spit leading into the water.

 A flurry of trucks and motorbikes is already coursing up and down the thin lane, loaded with coolers overflowing with ice and fish. Down the end of the road on a steep beach dozens of fishing boats are crowded bow first onto the shore.

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Mekong Diaries: Day 58

Feb 112010
 

Day 58

When we arrive Siem Reap is hot, even in the early morning. After checking into our hotel we dive straight into a very tight schedule.

We catch a taxi to the edge of the Tonle Sap, the largest lake in South East Asia, and meet the King of the Great Lake at a port called Chong Kneas.

A young man with a lot of responsibility, the King is actually the government officer in charge of enforcing fishing laws and zones on the Great Lake. He is a much more straightforward person than we expect when meeting powerful government officials in Cambodia.

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