A Speedboat into Cambodia and a Tour of Phnom Penh
The Victoria Speedboat: Chau Doc to the Cambodian Border
The ‘Victoria Speedboat’ to Phnom Penh was scheduled to leave Chau Doc at 7.00. We arrived for breakfast at 6 to find the restaurant packed. Having seen photos of the boat online I knew it was too small for this crowd, but where they were going was, for the moment, a mystery.
We checked out and placed our bags at the indicated spot. No
sooner had we sat down to wait than a man with a luggage trolley was beckoning
us to follow as he wheeled our cases down the steep ramp to join the crowd on the dock.
11 people, we discovered, were going to Cambodia with
us, the rest were bound for a cruise ship moored in deeper water.
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| Inside the Victoria Speedboat heading north |
We sped upstream for an hour or so through much the same
scenery we had been watching more slowly for the past two days, although here
there were more villages on stilts like the Cham village we had visited yesterday.
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| Speeding north from Chau Doc |
The river was some 50m wide until it merged with a larger branch on the right. We had left the delta and the Mekong was now a single
stream the best part of a kilometre wide.
The Vietnam-Cambodia Border
The Vietnamese border post was built on stilts beside the river. Handing over
our passports to the boat’s conductor, we disembarked and went to the waiting
room where I changed my last dong into Cambodian riels.
Our stamped passports were returned, we re-embarked and sped upstream for a few
minutes before disembarking again for the Cambodian formalities.
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| The Cambodian border post beside the Mekong |
The Vietnamese post had been starkly functional; the Cambodians had a semi-circle of folksy wooden offices set round a garden.
Photography is not usually permitted in border posts, but then there is little
to photograph. Here, though, were trees, flowers, Buddhist shrines and a crowd of
people waiting for visas in the shade of a mango tree.
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| Waiting for visas, Cambodian border post beside the Mekong |
Formalities were reasonably brief and around 9.00 we re-re-embarked for the final three hours to Phnom Penh.
The Victoria Speedboat: The Cambodian Border to Phnom Penh
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| Cambodian village beside the Mekong |
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| Cambodia |
Cambodia seemed less densely populated and the few villages we saw looked basic and scruffy. The banks here were several metres high so
villages were not built on stilts. Beyond the shacks, cattle - rarely glimpsed
in Vietnam - sat in the shade of the trees. There were fields of crops, mainly
maize, but the wide river, high banks and flat land made it difficult to see
far, though we did glimpse several temples with high, steeply pitched roofs and
gold finials, more Thai style than Vietnamese.
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| A temple beside the Mekong |
We passed a container ship. Relatively small as it was, we were surprised to see one at all so far from the
sea. 40 minutes short of Phnom Penh we passed a modern container port.
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| Container ship on the Mekon south of Phnom Penh |
Phnom Penh
We reached Phnom Penh around 12.30. It was the first major
urban centre we had seen from the river, but there were few high rise building
and little in the way of soaring temples – hardly an exciting river frontage.
The Tonle Sap joins the Mekong at Phnom Penh. We turned into
the tributary and moored at the main dock a hundred metres from the confluence.
Lunch at the Bopha Phnom Penh Restaurant
We were met by Kim and a driver, stowed our cases in the car
and walked into the Bopha Phnom Penh Restaurant which is described by the Rough
Guide as ‘a huge, decadent restaurant …with an open front looking over Tonle
Sap.’ It is undoubtedly large and stages Apsara performances in the evening -
and a taster at lunchtime - but ‘decadent’?
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| Lunchtime 'Apsara' performance Bopha, Phnom Penh |
The set meal of fish skewers marinated with lemon grass, Khmer chicken curry, stir fried vegetables with cashew nuts, rice, fruit and
Khmer ‘pastries’ – much gelatine but no pastry – was very enjoyable. The
chicken curry, not highly spiced, but featuring a rich coconut milk sauce was
worth the journey from Chau Doc on its own. Unlike the Vietnamese, Cambodians
eat rice dishes with a spoon and fork depriving us of an opportunity to further show off our chopstick skills.
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| Lunch at the Bopha, Phnom Penh |
We checked into our hotel, a rather characterless building in the narrow grid of streets away from the riverside. The hotel’s ban on
durians, guns and smoking, in that order, was less than totally reassuring.
The Royal Palace, Phnom Penh
The royal palace was nearby, though nothing remains of the original
palace built by King Ponhea Yat in 1434. The current Coronation Hall was constructed
in 1919 by King Sisowath, the grandfather of the present King, and is a concrete
replica of the wooden hall built by Sisowath’s brother and predecessor King
Norodom (reigned 1860 to 1904).
The Coronation Hall is hidden until you are well inside the palace
compound, and the first view of it is breath-taking – concrete or not.
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| Coronation Hall, Phnom Penh |
Sometimes the public are allowed in, though not today, but we could look through the windows and open (but barred) door at the high throne –
used for the coronations of King Sihanouk in 1941, and of his son, the present
monarch King Sihamoni in 2004. A set of normal chairs are arranged in front of
the throne for use when the king meets high ranking foreign delegations.
Photography is not permitted, and the rule is strictly enforced. The man next to me raised a camera and was
given a firm slap on the wrist (and not a metaphorical one) by a security guard
I had not previously noticed. The message was clear, do not dis the king, and
do not dis the security guards, even if they are little old men.
The royal residence – at the back of the hall – is in use so is never opened to visitors.
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| The Royal Residence, Phnom Penh |
The Royal Waiting Room is beside the Coronation Hall while at the edge of the compound is the Dancing Pavilion – a hall without walls were dance performances could be watched by moonlight.
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| The Dancing Pavilion, Phnom Penh |
A strange wrought iron pavilion covered in scaffolding to
the left of the Coronation Hall is, bizarrely, the pavilion from which Empress
Eugenie watched the opening of the Suez Canal. When it was dismantled, her
husband, Napoleon III, gave it to King Norodom and it was re-erected here. It
is in a poor state of repair and the current restoration is overdue. The scaffolding
was home to a group of monkeys who came to stare at the tourists. The tourists
stared back. Inevitably somebody approached too close and a monkey leapt at his
leg and climbed to his waist. There was a certain amount of panic, but no harm came to
monkey or human.
Wat Preah Keo, the Silver Pagoda
Wat Preah Keo, the Silver Pagoda, is next door, the site
interconnected with the Royal Palace. Built in 1962, its name comes from the
5329 silver tiles that cover the floor. Now there is a polishing job!
Again photography was not allowed so I have stolen Wikipedia’s picture of the (not quite) life sized golden Buddha. Its 90Kg of gold are encrusted with a lot of diamonds (9584 according to Wikipedia, 2086 according to the Rough Guide). It was made in the Royal workshops in 1906/7 on the orders of King Sisowath.
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| The golden Buddha, Silver Pavilion, Phnom Penh (picture from Wikipedia - looks like the security guards missed this one) |
It rather overshadows the Emerald Buddha, which is only 50cm tall and carved from jade. It is a 17th century replica of the Emerald Buddha in Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok, on which the Silver Pagoda looks to have been modelled. Click here for the 2015 post with the full story, myth and reality, of the Emerald Buddha.
On the outside wall the long mural of the Ramayana, much
praised by the Rough Guide, is in poor condition and needs serious work before
it will be worth looking at.
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| Topiary teapot, outside the Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh |
The Pagoda’s garden is a delight with abundant brightly
coloured flowers in pots, and some topiary, including this rather pleasing
teapot.
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| Flowers and chedi outside the Silver Pagoda |
There are two chedi, one containing the ashes of King
Norodom, the other those of his queen. There is also an equestrian statue of
King Norodom. Like the wrought iron pavilion it was a gift from Napoleon III
and was originally a statue of him. It is now a statue of Napoleon III's body with Norodom's head.
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| Equestrian statue of King Norodom/Napoleon III |
Behind the pagoda is a model of Angkor Wat. Large and detailed it would have saved us the bother of going there, if the trip had not
been already booked. It is precisely to scale, except for the fish in the moat,
which is a relief. 100m long carp would be scary.
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| Model of Angkor Wat, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh |
There are various side rooms and halls on the way out with collections of photographs, palanquins and silver elephants among other things.
They are all worth a brief visit.
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| Elephant room, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh |
The National Museum of Cambodia
We returned to the car and drove to the National Museum,
though a look at the map later suggested it would have been quicker to walk.
A large, single storey building it is, as national museums go, relatively compact.
The country’s history is neatly divided into 3:
pre-Angkorian (before the 9th century), Angkorian (9-13th century) and
post-Angkorian.
The first two are largely represented by stone statues,
Hindu until the 11th century and Buddhist afterwards. Some are huge, some are
fragmentary and one or two are huge and fragmentary like a reclining Vishnu who
lacks several arms and most of his body yet still dominates the end of the
first gallery. Some of the later statues are impressive, the faces emerging from
the stone are clearly real people. The best known, though not, I thought, the
best statue, is that of the Leper King, Jayavarman VII (1181-1218). Photography
in the museum is not permitted, so this is my photograph of the replica which
now sits in Angkor Thom where the original used to sit.
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| Replica of the statue of the Leper King on its original site, Angkor Thom |
Post-Angkor is more of a mixed bag including funerary urns, wall panels and other objets d’art.
It is not the biggest or most varied collection, but it is
well labelled in English and is worth an hour of anybody’s time.
The Romdeng Restaurant- Training Street Children for a Career
In the evening we followed Kim’s advice and ate at Romdeng –
it involved little more than crossing the road from our hotel. The restaurant is
a non-profit making school for former street children, the waiting staff wearing
identical tee shirts labelled ‘student’ or ‘teacher’ as appropriate.
Through the arch from the road is a relatively quiet garden,
but there was no room for us there. The restaurant is popular and without a
booking we were lucky to be found a single spare table on the balcony. The
service was excellent, the students a real credit to their teachers, and the food
was good, too. We had rice pancakes stuffed with yam, beans and beansprouts,
and stir fried chicken with courgettes and red chillies.
Having tested out ‘Cambodia Beer’ at lunchtime, we now tried
‘Angkor Beer’ so we had sampled both the country’s main brews. There was
little, possibly nothing, to choose between them. Both, made with more rice
than barley, are lightweight, fizzy and largely flavour free, but they are cold
and wet, which is important in the Cambodian climate.
The meal, including coffee (not a patch on Vietnamese coffee) came to a steepish $22, but it was all for a good cause. The Cambodian currency, the riel, is only used for small change. All prices are quoted in US dollars (not just for tourists) but as there are no coins Cambodian banknotes are used instead of cents. Pegged at 4000 riels to the dollar, the 1000 riel note is used as a ‘quarter’, the 100 riel note as 2½ cents (they are easy to collect and hard to spend) while the 500 riel note must actually be the ‘bit’ American’s refer to when they call a quarter ‘two bits’.
Part 7: Siem Reap (1) Angkor Wat
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell
Just read this entry covering the Victoria Speedboat on the Mekong. Fascinating and now I'm keen to read all entries in 'Follow The Mekong through...'. Thanks David.
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