Day 64 of 111. Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia

Ron is on his last day of his overland excursion. They had a boat tour to the floating village at Tonle Sap Lake. During the rainy season, the water level can rise by 30 feet. The striped post is used to measure the water level. When the tour group visited the lake, the lake was only 1.5 meters deep. All of the trees and buildings they could see would be totally submerged in the rainy season. The buildings, therefore, are built as temporary structures.

The colorful buildings in the bottom two pictures make up a floating village. These buildings float independently of each other and as the water levels rise, move along with the currents in the lake to areas with good anchorage. The right-hand building in the bottom photo is probably the only floating Catholic Church in the world.



Day 64 of 111. Singapore, Singapore

In the meantime, Paul docked in Singapore. He had two tasks during the daytime. First was to find fast internet. On route, he saw some of the interesting skyline, the TriSands Hotel that looks like it has a huge boat on top of three hotel towers, the giant Ferris Wheel, the Flyer, that he would ride later in the evening, and the huge tree-like structures that are part of the Garden by the Bay. Singapore has made a conscious effort to provide green space all over the city. These metal trees support many plants and also catch rainwater. They also light up at night. I saw many gardens built into the architecture of the buildings as well as several vertical gardens on the sides of structures. I walked from the ship to the gardens and then took a taxi to the Milenial Walk, a shopping mall. After trying Starbucks and McDonalds, I ended up with good internet at a pizza place called Marco Marco. I spent a few hours catching up on several internet projects. My second task was to buy two new 32 GB thumb drives. We have taken enough pictures to completely fill the thumb drives we brought with us on the trip.



I had an excursion called Singapore at Night. We started the evening with a river cruise along the river and the bay. Singapore has only been an independent country since the late 1900’s. They have worked hard to build up a beautiful city based on the shipping trade as well as some manufacturing. The old piers and waterways were dirty and smelly, so the government decided to build a dam and replace the sea water with fresh water. The area called Clarke Quay is a vibrant night place and the water in the river and the bay is one of the city’s reservoirs. Next we rode the gigantic Flyer. From a distance, the wheel really does not appear all that large until you realize that each car on the wheel is the size of a bus. About a dozen of us comfortably fit in one car with a lot of room to walk around and view the city and harbor from the air. We ended the night with a visit to Bugis Village, a market with lots of great souvenirs, street food, and music. We boarded about 15 TriShaws (a cart for two attached to a bicycle) and took off for a fun tour of some of the downtown areas of Singapore. Our trishaw driver was friendly and loved country western music, so we were blasting line dance tunes as we drove through Little India (the smells were great) and through the buildings. We had a fun time, but were glad to make it back to the ship at around 10:30 p.m… just in time to meet the people back from the Angkor Wat excursion.