Monday, Oct 10 - AMA WaterWays Cruise

Today’s weather seems almost sunny compared to the last few days.  After breakfast we finished packing and headed to the reception area where we checked out and met our driver and guide.  They took us to the Sofitel Hotel where we checked into our cruise.  We were assigned to the “Yellow Family” and sat down to wait for our bus. 

The drive to the cruise ship was almost 5 hours.  The drive was interesting with rice fields...

river towns...

simple homes...

and even some road side sculpture businesses.

We stopped mid-morning for a “comfort break” at the market in a small village.  The market is well known for the local specialties…fried water cockroaches, fried tarantulas, fried scorpions, and other fried creepy crawlies.  The market was doing a booming business but it didn’t appear that anyone on our bus bought any of these “snacks”.

A short time later we stopped to eat our box lunches at a restaurant with a deck overlooking the Tonle Sap Lake.   After lunch and a short break we were back on the bus for the rest of the trip. 

Cambodia has the same kind of stores and markets as the other Asia countries we visited.  And by now, they are normal, so not as fascinating as our first visits to Asia.  On the drive we saw lots of rice fields, mostly for sticky rice..  The countryside is pretty flat. 

We saw lots of houses built on stilts.  For three reasons:  Get above the floods, allow air circulation to cool the house, and storage under the house.

Our cruise is with AmaWaters and our river boat is the RV Amadara.  It was “docked” tied to a tree at the side of the river.  There was no real dock so we trouped out to the boat on tarps laid out on the muddy bank of the river.  A bit inelegant but all of the crew was extremely friendly and helpful. 

Having arrived at about 3:00, they had a “light lunch” awaiting us.  Just like the large ocean liners, there is lots of food at all hours.  We checked into our room, had a light snack and headed up to the Sun Deck to enjoy the cruise.  The temperatures are noticeably cooler than those in Siem Reap, a welcome relief. 

Most of the rest of the day was taken up in visiting other passengers, having a safety drill, being introduced to the staff,eating. and enjoying the sights to be seen along the river. The children loved to wave at us as we floated by.

We saw many floating home...

and many homes and temples right along the river.

There were a lot of small boats on the river.  The river was their road and the boats seemed to be their standard mode of transportation.