Siem Reap to Kampong Cham
Most of us were actually relieved to hear that our embarkation point for the Jahan was changed to Kampong Cham on the Mekong River, instead of Prek K’dam on the Tonle Sap tributary. This saved an hour of driving, and a few feigned disappointment that we would not pass through the infamous “Spiderville,” which is one of the main supply centers for the Cambodian delicacy of fried spiders.
Actually the drive was a beautiful change of scenery after our first few days of unbelievable Angkor-period temples. The road followed the northern boundary of Lake Tonle Sap’s floodplain, which is dropping to its dry-season lows right now and revealing its fertile plains. During the monsoon seasons the entire lower basin of the Mekong starts to back up with rainwater runoff, and the bottle-necked delta plugs the drainage so that Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong delta fill like a bathtub. Even the currents are reversed upstream, and this past October’s peak filled to record levels and flooded the Angkor Wat temple complex!
We saw the long rice paddies, the classic-shaped haystacks of rice straw, and enthusiastic fishermen taking advantage of the concentrating fish in the shrinking tributaries and pools. We drove through villages that seemed stretched with market vendors all selling the exact same produce and products, and we tried to snap passing pictures of Buddhist spirit houses along the way. Soon the plains gave way to rubber tree plantations, which meant we were nearing Kampong Cham (the banks of the “Cham” People), and the “port” where our ship awaited. The port was actually a sloped river embankment that we edged down with the welcoming assistance of the finely-dressed crew of the Jahan. What a luxurious anomaly the ship seemed in this subsistence landscape! The colonial classic décor seemed of another world as we walked the gangplanks from the muddy banks to the welcoming cold towels and smiling faces of the crew.
This was Lindblad Expeditions’ first boarding of the Jahan, that was to be our home for the next week on the Mekong River, and the foundation of our Cambodia and Vietnam expeditions for the upcoming future. The remainder of the day was spent getting familiar with the ship’s layout, crew, systems, guides and the town of Kampong Cham, anxious to transition from the great temples of Angkor Wat to the backwater subsistence villages of the Mekong.
