Brick kilns don’t usually feature high on the list of things to do on a luxury river cruise.
But
on one such 8-day journey along the mighty Mekong between Vietnam’s Ho
Chi Minh City and Cambodia’s Siem Reap, a village kiln has proven a
fascinating diversion amid daily shore excursions that extend from the
ubiquitous local markets, to a leisurely farmland ox-cart ride – and
the chilling reality of Pol Pot’s notorious Killing Fields.
And
for good measure a touch of romance too, with a visit to the once-home
of a young Chinese man whose love affair with a French teenager became
the basis of an award-winning 1980s novel, and an equally successful
1990s movie…
This captivating cruise is aboard the stylish
62-stateroom AmaLotus that’s owned by Australia’s APT Touring, and
which began her Mekong career only in September this year.
It’s
just outside the industrial and trading port of Sa Dec in southern
Vietnam that guests on AmaLotus are taken ashore by the ship’s tour
guides and shown the workings of the beehive-shaped kilns, which to
many Australians seem somehow reminiscent of the natural orange and
black, and almost-similarly shaped formations, found in our Kimberley
region.
And the kilns of Sa Dec operate as they have for
centuries, being fired by discarded rice husks from local farms to bake
bricks and tiles from other farmlands’ clay – and with nothing wasted,
the husks being retrieved as ash to be ploughed back into the farm soil
as fertilizer.
From these kilns AmaLotus’s guests are taken by
small boat into Sa Dec itself for a visit to the one-time home of a
wealthy and influential Chinese family, whose son began an affair in
1928 with teenager Marguerite Duras, who had been born to French
parents living near Saigon in 1914.
When the affair ended in
1931, Marguerite left to study mathematics in France, joined the French
Resistance during World War II, and along the way began a prolific
career as a writer of plays, film scripts, essays, short fiction and
novels. She also directed numerous films and died in 1996 aged 82.
But
it was an ‘autobiographical novel’ called “The Lover” that Duras wrote
in 1984 that won her the most praise and recognition: said to be the
story of her teenage romance all those years before, it won the 1984
Prix Goncourt for "the best and most imaginative prose work of the
year."
The Sa Dec home of her once-lover is now a museum, and
aboard a sister vessel to AmaLotus on the Mekong, and named by APT La
Marguerite after the author, the floor tiles are actually replicas of
those in the famous old house…
The Vietnam and Cambodian guides
aboard AmaLotus ensure guests see and enjoy as much of their river
experience as possible, leading 2- to 3-hour shore excursions daily,
with guests provided with headphones to hear the commentary that also
includes insights into guides’ family lives and some of their
more-chilling wartime experiences.
This is particularly so
during a Phnom Penh tour that includes the Royal Palace, National
Museum, city markets and the infamous S21 Detention Centre – and
Pol Pot’s horrific Killing Fields.
Both horrifying and
chillingly fascinating, it was at the latter that Khmer Rouge soldiers
killed an estimated 1.7-million Cambodians, or 21 per cent of the
population. One football-oval-sized area alone contains the bodies of
an estimated 20,000 victims: because bullets were too costly, most were
beaten to death with axes, knives, and bamboo sticks.
There is also the notorious Tuoi Sieng Museum of Genocide on the site of the one-time torture camp, prison and execution centre.
More-pleasantly
focused daily excursions include to picturesque floating communities,
city and village produce markets, rice-paper making factories, a
rice-whiskey distillery, demonstrations of silk weaving, a fish farm, a
hill-top Buddhist Monastery, and an ox-cart farmland ride – and of
course there’s plenty of time for bargain shopping or picture-taking.
AmaLotus's
8-day Mekong package is priced from $3095 per person twin share (based
on an April 2 2012 departure), which includes cruise, 21 onboard
meals, local wine with dinner, local beer, soft drinks and
spirits on request, onboard entertainment, guided shore excursions, APT
Tour Director, port charges, transfers and tipping.
Details 1300 229 804, www.aptouring.com.au or see Travel Agents
