A Pandaw down the Mekong

We did our first Pandaw cruise in November 2006, when we sailed up the Irrawaddy from Rangoon to Mandalay. There were less than 20 passengers and because we had a simply marvelous time we were keen to take another Pandaw, down the Mekong, from Siem Reap in Cambodia to Saigon in Vietnam. Well, here I am at the Park Hyatt in Saigon, writing these random thoughts about the Pandaw experience which is clearly a popular operation but has surprisingly few comments on this forum.

A Pandaw is an attractive proposition - replicas of those teak, veranda’d and wicker’d river boats that plied the Irrawaddy in the colonial era ease you up or down the rivers of Indochina, gin and tonic in hand. Well, that’s the image and I have to say, during the day it’s a totally accurate picture. And that is why founder Paul Strachan’s entrepreneurial spirit has paid off so well: he now has Pandaws chugging along in Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam and Sarawak and he’s planning trips into Kalimantan and Laos. A foray down the Ganges a year or two ago was a bit of a fiasco yet Strachan had the confidence to admit the problem and write about it.

This time, on the Mekong, we had about 40 passengers - about a third were Aussies and they are usually great company. There was a patchwork of Europeans, six Brits and six Americans who got out at Phnom Penh. Although the Pandaw brochure claimed that tables in the dining room were always laid for couples and foursomes, the room on this occasion only had tables for six and eight. On the first night we joined a couple who were sitting alone on a table for eight. I had already marked him as an American - he wanted to be the life and soul of the party, he cracked corny jokes at the initial group briefing, he wore a loud T-shirt, gawdy jewelry and earrings and, frankly, he looked and sounded like Barney Foreskin from Arkansas.

In fact, to our amazement, he came from Antwerp and was Belgian. Within five minutes of meeting us he started this endless racist rant about immigration, how the Muslim hordes are running Belgium and how he wanted to be James Bond and “get a license to kill them all.” Now, I am not exactly a lily-livered liberal but so offensive was this Belgian we got up and walked out before dessert and never spoke a word to them again.

The next day at lunch we sat next to a man whose introductory salvo was that he’d been all over the Far East and thought that all Indonesians, Indians and Cambodians were “pigs” because they lived surrounded by their garbage. He was from Switzerland which we all know is a garbage-free zone. Then there was the Aussie woman who plonked herself down next to us on the sundeck. We mentioned the terrible floods afflicting Queensland and she said, “Yeah, it’s annoying for them but we’re from Western Australia and we have a drought.” Then she said, “And you know what we say in the drought? When it’s yellow, let it mellow. When it’s brown, flush it down.” We hadn’t even got on name terms, though that little lavatorial poem of hers was to have a significant bearing on this trip: lots of us were flushing it down several times a day.

Pandaw can’t choose who travels on their boats and they can’t filter out the racists, but we did think that the elegant sophistication of our Burma trip was missing tis time. We thought the whole operation was a bit scruffy and didn’t relate to the generally high prices charged, though we understand that Australians get the most amazing last-minute deals. Anyway, the operation lacked style and this started with the waiters and other staff whose uniforms needed replacing. They just weren’t smart enough and service levels were not quite as high as we remembered them, perhaps because there was no obvious manager on board, though we had no complaints at all with the housekeeping operation which was outstanding. Cabins were as we remembered them, clever pieces of design which maximize a minimum of space, so you can stow suitcases with ease. The air-con worked and the lavatories held out, though they sometimes threatened to seize up which is the opposite of what happened to many people’s bowels.

Which brings me to the food, always served in the rather dreary dining room. For us, the food on board was simply terrible, though there was a slight improvement towards the end of the trip. Surprisingly, the menus were almost exclusively Cambodian or Vietnamese and consisted mainly of cold salads, with sliced carrot, un-peeled cucumber and peppers being the main ingredients - we got the impression that menus were designed for economy. Fish and prawns were turned into mush, morsels of meat were turned into leather. Soups and rice were generally OK. Desserts were sickly sweet, so we always went for the ice-cream option. Coffee was bitter and stewy. Because so many people had stomach upsets, I and others believed it was due to the preparation of the food. And because the last time I had a case of the runs was in Burma on the Pandaw, I have to conclude that they are perhaps unhealthy environments.

The lack of management grip was also a concern. On our Burmese trip there was a charming, talented Frenchman who was the floating hotel manager. On this trip we had a purser, a young Vietnamese woman who dressed in the most amazing way - sharp grey suit by day, incredibly glamorous evening gowns at night. But one night we had a problem and there was absolutely no one on the boat who had any authority at all. Or spoke any English.

We were berthed in Chau Doc and another cruise boat, the Mekong Explorer, had tied up to our boat, so we were side-by-side. The noise coming into our cabin at was incredible and I assumed it was being caused by the Mekong Explorer’s generator. There was no one on the Pandaw to sort this out - the purser, head waiter, captain, all had gone ashore, leaving the 40 passengers alone. So I boarded the Mekong Explorer and quickly found its manager. I told him I thought his boat was making an unacceptable noise but he quickly came aboard our boat and proved to me that it was in fact the Pandaw which had the wrong generator turned on. The noise was coming out of our boat, banging into the other boat, back and forth, like cannon fire in an echo chamber. Apparently, his own passengers had complained and he had not been able to do anything about it since the Pandaw was completely without any management presence.

Eventually, at about 10.30pm, our purser showed up, in hot pants this time, and we were able to switch cabins to the quiet side of the boat. In fact, we had already moved from this cabin due to a virtually identical problem at a previous port of call when no less than four cruise boats were tied up together, the sort of traffic jam you expect on the Nile but comes as quite a shock on the Mekong. We then had a cabin at the front of the boat and had to endure a thumping noise and exhaust fumes from another ship, the Margarita. For three nights out of seven we tied up alongside other boats, when we were unable to enjoy our own balcony as we were only four feet away from the balcony of the other boat. And when there wasn’t another boat, we anchored in midstream and risked a blizzard of insects. We seriously thought of getting off early, though we stuck it through to the end, all the way from Siem Reap to Saigon.

And this brings me to the itinerary. For three or four months of the year you can sail from near Angkor, across the vast Tonle Sap lake, and down to near Saigon. When we went, in January during the dry season, you must join the boat at Kampong Cham, a four-and-a-half hour drive from Angkor. I quite enjoyed this coach ride for it revealed a huge slice of Cambodian countryside - a vast plain, a fine road and fascinating glimpses into rural life. While I might have preferred to cruise over the legendary lake, this was OK though some people didn’t like the long coach trip at all.

Because there is relatively little mileage between the start and finish of the cruise, there some initial to-ing and fro-ing before we actually got going. This resulted in a dreary first jaunt up a tributary and then one absolutely stunning trip up another tributary, from Phnom Penh to Kampong Chhnang, when the river got really narrow and village life and wildlife all combined into an indelible image of the Mekong and Indochina.

There is, though, a fundamental truth about this cruise that must be understood. The whole point of a Pandaw trip is to see the river slipping past. There is nothing else to see. The journey is the goal. There is no major sightseeing, no enormous temple unless you do the trip in reverse and have Angkor at the end, and that might be the best option. All the towns and villages are the same, except the poverty of them increases and the friendliness decreases in Vietnam, until you get to Saigon which is a boom-town. It’s true that these river towns and villages can be exciting places to visit but they are essentially identical - it’s just a market smelling of spices of dried fish, maybe a Catholic church or colonial buildings if you’re lucky, and always a million people, or so it seems, crowding you, hustling you, shaking your hand, ignoring you, looking warily at you. But when Pandaw started offering trips to brick factories and rice-paper factories we opted out, preferring to go ashore in mid-afternoon and taking a stroll into town. In this way we discovered some lovely people and buildings, including the utterly amazing central market in Phnom Penh which we had last seen in a semi-derelict state in 1992. And we took a break from the Pandaw’s cuisine by dining at the wonderfully restored Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh.

One last thing: the pollution. The deeper you get into Vietnam and the Mekong Delta the pollution becomes so thick that you can breathe it, taste it, cut it with a knife, bottle it and bring it back home as a souvenir. The landscape is smeared grey, all day, and sunrises and sunsets are wispy orange-pink, like a Turner painting or a paragraph out of Joseph Conrad; beautiful but deadly. All this pollution, all that horrible food and samey sightseeing can make a week on a Pandaw seem quite a long time, but we loved just lounging around on the sun-deck watching this incredible world slip past.

Would we do another? I think probably not.

Thanks for your candid assessment. We are going on the RV Tonle from Saigon to Siem Reap on 17 March, under the Viking nameplate, then flying to Hanoi. Did you take any special precautions against mosquitos? I understand that malaria and Dengue fever are problems in the Siem Reap area.

JJ

We didn't take any malaria precautions on this trip - time of year counted but in the hotter, wetter season in Cambodia/Vietnam I might feel differently, though I personally have an instinctive dislike of those pills.

We are considering cruising on The Mekong aboard RV Tonie in January 2012. Do you have any more reflections about the trip?

No, what more do you want? If you have any specific questions just let me know and I'll try to help.

We are considering cruising on The Mekong aboard RV Tonie in January 2012. Do you have any more reflections about the trip?

Al and I will be cruising RV Tonle from Siem Reap motor to boat then onto Saigon in Jan. 2012. Seeking cruising mates.

What time of year is the best to this trip? Is the rainy season really unbearable and does it preclude day trips? Is the dry season really dry and that's when passengers have to be diverted to a bus to go further up the river to catch their cruises?