Day 18 - River Cruise Day 7 - Cruise to Vietnam

After breakfast this morning the ship was moved to wait for the arrival of the customs officers before we sailed for Vietnam. This is our last look at Phnom Penh before heading to Vietnam. Today we stay on board all day watching the sights on the banks of the river.

The history of Vietnam begins around 2,700 years ago. Successive dynasties based in China ruled Vietnam directly for most of the period from 111BC until 938 when Vietnam regained its independence. Vietnam remained a tributary state to its larger neighbour China for much of its history but repelled invasions by the Chinese as well as three invasions by the Mongols between 1255 and 1285. The independent period temporarily ended in the middle of the last 19th century. During WWII Japan expelled the French to occupy Vietnam, though they retained French administration during their occupation. 

A view of our sister ship with APT still docked in Phnom Penh.

The joining of the Tonle Sap and the Mekong Rivers. The Mekong is the less muddy of the two rivers. The Mekong Delta the "Nine River Delta" is the region in south western Vietnam where the Mekong River approaches and empties into the sea through a network of distributaries. The Mekong delta region encompasses a large portion of south eastern Vietnam of 39,000 sq km. The size of the area covered by water depends on the season.

The inhabitants of the Mekong Delta region are largely ethnic Viet, with Khmer minority populations living primarily in the Tra Vinh, Soc Trang, and Muslim Cham in Tan Chau, by An Giang provinces. There are also sizable Hoa (ethnic Chinese) populations in the Kien Giang and Tra Vinh provinces.

Day 17 - River Cruise Day 6 – Phnom Penh

Last night we were entertained by a local orphanage with national dancing. The children were about 12 - 16 years old.

Today was a day in Phnom Penh, we spent the morning at the National Museum, recently restored it houses more than 5,000 works of art, ranging from the 7th to 13th century. Unfortunately photographs were only aloud outside so I only have a few photos.

This is the representation of a yoni with a buffalo head, look closely at the front and this is the nose area, going back you will see the ears on the side and a faint outline of the eye and the horns above on the top.

We are fascinated with the asian style of petrol station, quite extraordinary. The fuel (not sure whether E10, Unleaded or Premium but you can guess) and cold drinks and cigarettes are all available as any good service station would have! We saw fuel like this in Siem Reap being pushed down the road and Kevin said it was a fuel tanker for the bottles of fuel being sold.

We walked back to the boat along the riverside which was just lovely and past the Royal Palace which we will visit inside this afternoon, after our lunch on board the boat.

The Royal Palace was built in 1866 as the home of the Cambodian King. Most parts of the Palace, except the Kings Building are open, the Prasat Prak (Prasat means temple and Prak means silver) was named because over 5,000 pieces of its floor tiles are made from silver, from melted down coins. Within the Silver Pagoda is a Buddha made from pure gold, has 2,086 diamonds attached to it and weighs over 90 kilograms. Made from the melted down coffin of the king when his body was cremated, as a final fulfilment of a request he made. Also housed in the pagoda is an emerald Buddha the same as the one we saw in Bangkok, however we were able to get a lot closer to this one to view it clearly. Unfortunately again no photographs inside were allowed.

 

We past this beautiful Buddhist temple and complex on our river front walk.

This is the Supreme Court building.

Although elephants are no longer used to transport the king, this is the original elephant shelter at the Royal Palace, now a museum type room.

The grounds within the Royal Palace were just so well maintained and beautiful.

Here is a display of the royal colours of the week each having their own meaning, each day of the week corresponds with a planet, and each planet has a personality of its own. So each day has a color which clothing should correspond to.

An ancient poem explains the days:
Red is for Sunday,
Orange truly looks like a beautiful moon,
Purple is reserved for Tuesday,
Wednesday is the green of the lieb plant
Thursday is the yellowish green of the leaves of a banana palm
Happy Friday is blue and must be tidy,
Saturday is the color of ripe pring (a type of plum) according to the ages

Day 16 - River Cruise Day 5 – To Phnom Penh

This was sunset here in Cambodia.

Today we went for a walk around Koh Chen Copper Village, it is one of three villages left in cambodia that specialise in the production of Copper and Silver Plated ornamental pieces and jewellery.

We visited a local government school here is a poster of the numbers to 40, as you can see they have a beautiful rounded flowing style of writing letters,

Here is one of the boats used in the Water/Moon Festival held once a year.

This lady is crushing sugar can with this machine to make sugar palm juice, it is very ice and not as sweet as you may imagine it would be.

Except for Phnom Penh there are no docks for the boat and we walk along planks of wood then up the banks of the river to get to the road, a little different to the European version of river cruising.

The men mould the copper into the shape of a bowl etc then it is the women who engrave the metal with the intricate designs.

We now come to Phnom Penh and we see sky scrappers and large concrete bridges etc. I was not expecting to see this city to be so modern, however when we walk on to shore the essence of the people and the lifestyle we have come to know as Cambodia is still there with the sky scrappers scattered in between the every day Cambodia.

Phnom Penh means Hill of Penh the capital and largest city in Cambodia, on the banks of the Mekong River. It has been the capital since the French colonised Cambodia, and has grown to become the nations centre of economic activities.

Once known as the the pearl of Asia it was considered one of the loveliest of French built cities in Indochina in the 1920's.

Wat Phnom is situated  a hill 27m high, Phnom means hill in Khmer. Legend has it in 1372, a woman named Penh discovered four statues of the Buddha on the nearby riverbank and placed them in a purpose build pagoda on the hill.

Statue of King Sisowath.

A beautifully carved Mother Earth Statue was inside the temple on the hill with a smaller unpainted version beside her.

Tapestry is a really popular passtime of the women here in Cambodia, they sit around temples, museums etc relaxing with other women doing their tapestries. We have seen several women with cages of small birds around the temples we are unsure what these are used for.

We were surprised to see cobblestones in Cambodia, they are made of a rock that looks like volcanic rock, however it is not as they have no volcanoes here.

Electricity organisation is the same as in Thailand.