Vietnam Cambodia River Cruise 2017 – Mekong River – NNs On the Wind

September 3, 2017April 28, 2019 Kathleen Ennen

Aug 28, 2017 – Amawaterways

Mekong River, Cambodia

Today we head to the ship, the AmaDara on the Mekong River. We stop along the way at a market where, if you want, you can have roasted insects. Many to choose from. We opted for the box lunch provided!

Aug 29, 2017 – Amawaterways

Mekong River, Cambodia

During the morning, we went on a walking tour to Angkor Ban, one of the few villages in Cambodia that was not destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. Here people still live in their traditional wooden abodes and keep their old cultural traditions alive. Hundreds of wooden houses stand intact on stilts, shaded with banana trees, among the hustle and bustle of the daily agricultural on-going of the local villagers.

The ship continues on for our first night in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

Aug 30, 2017 – Amawaterways

Mekong River, Cambodia

The morning excursion takes us to Oudong, Cambodia’s former royal capital from the early 17th century until 1866. Today, Oudong is a place of pilgrimage for Cambodians. While here, we are treated to a memorable Buddhist Blessing Ceremony at a monastery. After visiting Oudong, we take a truly authentic excursion, an oxcart ride through a local village Kampong Tralach. Later in the day, we visited Phnom Penh via a tuk tuk ride and saw the city’s French Colonial architecture and tree-lined boulevards set amidst monumental Angkorian architecture. Tuk tuks here are driven by motorcycle – not bicycles as in Hanoi.

Aug 31, 2017 – Amawaterways

Mekong River, Cambodia

Today we “coached” to Cambodia’s infamous Killing Fields and the Khmer Rouge’s grim Tuol Sleng S21 detention center (Genocide Museum). After lunch on the ship, we explored the highlights of the city, followed by a visit to the Royal Palace, the spectacular Silver Pagoda and the National Museum, which has an outstanding collection of Khmer crafts.

Sep 1, 2017 – Amawaterways

Mekong River, Cambodia

We are back on the ship where we cross the border from Cambodia to Vietnam. We pause while a small boat with a member of the crew takes a suitcase with all our passports in it to the border patrol station on the shore. We wait about an hour for the formalities to be completed.

We have traveled over the years and retired in 2017, when we started on a nine month long adventure departing in December 2017. In the past we’ve traveled to Sri Lanka, Africa (several times), Turkey, and made a number of trips to Europe, and St Lucia. Our 2015 trip to Turkey, took nearly 3 weeks to explore Istanbul, Cappadocia and the areas in proximity to Izmir.

This is a chronicle of our travels, past and present. We love to travel by trains, planes, ships, and cars – and love sailing whenever and wherever we can.

We retired from the US General Services Administration, the Federal Government’s landlord! Thom worked at planning and large scale program management of numerous projects and Kathleen, a registered professional civil engineer, was a project manager for many infrastructure and building renovation projects, including both design and construction aspects, in New England, Florida and the metro DC area. We lived in Washington DC for 12 years and upon retirement sold the house, putting a few things in a 5’x5’ storage unit and started traveling.

On return to the US in September 2018, after traveling to 21 countries, we bought a Class C RV – 2019 Thor Freedom Elite 24FE. We enjoyed our week long camping trip in New Zealand in a small converted van with few amenities, so this seemed liked a good way to tour the US. We hope to visit family along the way and as many US National Parks as possible.

UPDATE – the Covid pandemic made travel more difficult for us. We were abroad for several months when the pandemic started and returned to the US in July 2020. After several months in the RV to visit Utah and Albuquerque NM, we moved east, bought a house on the Northern Neck of Virginia, and sold the RV. For 2021 and 2022 we tended to our new house and cottage, gardens and various boats including a 18’ 1977 Marshall Sanderling catboat and a 25’ Steiger Craft Chesapeake fishing boat, and kayaks and a canoe. Hopefully travel will start again one day!!

May 2022