Mekong River Expedition February 7, 2014

For our afternoon bus trip I decided to try walking up the steep embankment with Kathy’s help; however, 2 crew members rushed to assist my endeavor.  Neville had a chair for me to go back to the boat.      When Pauli, our guide, said that we were visiting the twin holy “mountains” of Phnom Prod and Phnom Srey (man and woman), I thought “big”; however, they were simply small hills.  I stayed on the bus while the others went into the monastery, saw various replicas of Buddha, watched monkeys playing outside and walked down many steps to the bus.                                                                                                                                      On our way to the ecotourism RURAL village of Choeungkok, supported by a French NGO, we saw a farmer with his water buffaloes cooling off in a pond.  One of our group said that she was “villaged out.”  The community was celebrating a festival and the children sang the ABC song.  Rice is grown in the wet season and the houses are built on stilts.                                                                                                                          Our evening entertainment began with a presentation of the whole crew  who performed several musical numbers and ended with the crew and passengers doing the twist, the Macarena and others.  Kathy was in her element – one of the captains put his hat on her head when they danced together.