This is how your ‘holiday from hell’ could turn into the time of your life

Reignite a sense of adventure by embracing your holiday mishaps. Photo / Getty Images
Cruising Cambodia’s aquatic artery, the Mekong River, and experiencing a series of mishaps in the process reignited a sense of intrepid travel for writer Cath Johnsen.
I’m calf-deep in thick, rust-coloured mud, on a pathway next to a flooded rice paddy in the Kampong Tralach district of Cambodia. I try to pull my foot out, without losing my (once) white shoe, and continue to put one soggy foot in front of the other as I drag my bicycle beside me. The rest of my group is in a similar predicament – drenched in equal parts by torrential wet-season rain and sky-high-humidity-induced sweat. We find sticks to remove the caked-on mud from our tyres and keep pushing to complete the 15km ride back to our awaiting ship on the Mekong River. Google Maps has no idea where we are and I’m perfectly okay with that.
Resting, I soak up the scenery, untouched by the glossy modern world of slick and often inauthentic travel experiences. Here, in the heart of the country, we are not battling hordes of tourists trying to photograph an iconic landmark. We are the only tourists, and the landmarks are ramshackle dwellings, their inhabitants swinging languidly in hammocks outside, hoping to catch a breeze. Nor are we about to be rescued from the electrical storm we are currently caught in by a shadowing minivan. Instead, we must rely on our local guide and our own resources. Earlier in the ride we sheltered in a lean-to corrugated iron shed from which a beaming Khmer woman sold a meagre selection of second-hand clothes while catching rainwater in an assortment of pots out the front. Further along, we passed an open-air barber shop, two walls and a rickety roof, where a solitary barber stood trimming another man’s hair in the unhurried Cambodian fashion I had already fallen in step with.
READ MORE: Cruising in Cambodia and Vietnam on a river cruise.
But back to where we are currently bogged, a couple of local children are playing in the streams of water near me, squealing with delight and using broken bits of polystyrene as makeshift body boards. The lush, deep green fields of rice that surround us seem to grow before our very eyes in these idyllic weather conditions. I’ve caught my breath and, after a fair bit more pushing, we are back on firmer dirt tracks, where bullocks pull sturdily on wooden carts (Cambodian BMWs, as our guide jokes). They watch us with their enormous, unblinking eyes as they steadily carry on their work, just as they have done for centuries.
Clearly, the residents of this rural area find us mud-splattered “barang” (foreigners) a bit of a curiosity. “What’s your name?” they repeatedly call out. Children rush out to wave a greeting. I try to wave back as I also inexpertly dodge potholes, meandering chickens, roaming dogs and oncoming traffic, including 125cc motorbikes (no licence required). I get the wobbles a few times but am relieved to keep my (now very wet and muddy) bottom on the seat.
With the sun suddenly making a dazzling reappearance, our teak-panelled riverboat, the Toum Tiou II, comes into view. The crew supress chuckles as they kindly remove my shoes and wash them in the river (they’ll forever be a shade of Mekong brown now – a souvenir). Once blissfully showered and dressed in clean, dry clothing, the other 22 cruise guests and I chortle heartily over dinner as we relive the day’s experiences. Our meal is served family style, with shared dishes of fish cake salad, chicken masala, wok-fried prawns with tamarind paste, poached baby bok choy in sesame sauce, and a fruit crepe to finish – a nod to the time of French rule in Cambodia’s history. A few glasses of Louis Pinel sauvignon blanc make the day’s misadventures, including the blistering patch on my leg caused by the toxin of an angry rove beetle I must have unwittingly encountered, seem even funnier. After comparing rove beetle wounds over drinks with my fellow passengers, a rowdy session of top-deck karaoke seems like a good idea, with the crew eagerly joining in. I did pity the fishermen residing on their riverboats, who probably fell asleep that clear, star-filled night to the reverberations of You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette being belted out across the waterways.
I related my holiday stories in real-time to my girlfriends back home, including a rather unfortunate need to consume the sachets of “dia-relief” I had thankfully brought with me. I blame the ice in the black coffee served over sticky sweetened condensed milk I bought from a street vendor in Phnom Penh while hurtling around the bustling city on a tuk-tuk. Or could it have been the crispy crickets and silkworms I had eaten the evening before as pre-dinner appetisers?
My friends assumed I was having a miserable time. But in fact, I was having the time of my life. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt such a strong sense of travel-induced joie de vivre as I did while exploring the cities and villages of Cambodia that front the Mekong River. Being so far removed from bland tourism experiences governed by stuffy regulations felt exhilarating. And despite a cruise probably sounding like an unlikely vessel for an intrepid holiday, the intimate CF Mekong Discovery cruise proved otherwise.
For some time now, I’ve noticed the challenge of travel to far-flung places has become so completely surmounted that I find myself regaling my children with stories about the “good old days” of travel – when you’d land somewhere and no one could speak English and you’d have to dig out your phrase book to try to clumsily ascertain whether you were catching the correct train. The kind of travel where your wallet would become increasingly fat from the various currencies you needed to have on hand. And where globalisation hadn’t yet made souvenirs and food feel boringly homogenous. A stuffed bear toy I bought in the heights of Alaska is now made in the same Chinese factory as the baguette keyring I picked up from the Eiffel Tower gift shop…
But my time in Cambodia delivered something that gave me the zing of old. Many riverside towns we laid anchor in felt largely untouched by time. A bottle of water in Cambodia costs about ៛5000 and we paid for it in wads of cash only, pulling the bottles from an esky along the roadside. Women stationed behind home-made carts served up a mind-boggling array of genuine street food, cut up and cooked right in front of us: tangy guava with a chili salt for dipping quickly became a favourite. And we could watch our ship’s (entirely local) crew selecting the fresh produce from the markets that would later become our chef-prepared dinner.
In contrast to the big, brassy and impersonal cruise operators, our charming riverboat putted unobtrusively through the Cambodian waters, enabling us to observe everyday life, respectfully. Over breakfast one morning, we sat on the ship’s deck and watched a funeral procession pass by us on the dusty road which ran in parallel with the river. Men, women and children, all dressed in white, walked behind a gilded carriage, and monks chanted as a mournful melody was played. Earlier, we had observed children riding their bicycles to school, doubling each other along the bumpy track. “Remember, bumpy roads equals a free massage!” our guide, Mao, laughed.
The Mekong is more than just a river; it’s a lifeline for the people who live along its banks, providing water for their crops, fish for their tables, and a means of transport in a land where roads are often more waterlogged thoroughfares than paved highways. It was also a lifeline for this jaded traveller. The experiences I had and the people I met along the mighty Mekong reignited the spark that keeps me burning to travel.
The writer journeyed through Cambodia and Vietnam courtesy of CF Mekong River Cruises by CroisiEurope. Their Discovery Cruise travels in both directions between Siem Reap and Ho Chi Minh City.
croisieuroperivercruises.com.