Sail the Mekong River through the heart of South East Asia to experience all Vietnam and Cambodia have to offer

FOR the best fish and chips in Vietnam and Cambodia, you do not need to look further than the mighty Mekong River.

The waterway is a floating supermarket, with boats packed full of everything from potatoes and perch to clothes and candy.

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And it’s try before you buy. After opening up at 5am, vendors hand out samples hanging on bamboo poles to buyers pulled up beside them.

The goods are then taken off to villages and towns to be sold in markets together with less appetising food, such as frogs, eels and skinned rats.

Fortunately, those “delicacies” weren’t on my menu as I sailed along the Mekong — just the delicious fresh fish, fruit and veg prepared by a cruise ship chef.

I joined AmaWaterways’ Charms of the Mekong just outside Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, in the middle of a three-week trip living out of a suitcase.

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A great decision as my husband and I were thoroughly spoiled for seven nights on the 124-passenger AmaDara, with its luxurious balcony cabins, wooden sun deck with a pool, top-class food, fun entertainment, spa treatments and the most friendly and helpful staff ever.

We didn’t have to think for ourselves, apart from choose what we wanted to eat and drink from a superb buffet breakfast and lunch, and a la carte dinner.

Oh, and to choose what night we wanted to eat in the Chef’s Table speciality restaurant.

All complimentary excursions are led by fantastic local guides, so we learned about each country’s history and people who had survived brutal wars and dictatorship.

Michel Verdure

Split into small groups, we were taken by bus, boat or tuk-tuk to landmarks, monuments and temples or walked from the ship up the river bank to remote ­villages.

AmaWaterways supports local communities, and cruise manager AK always gets a warm welcome.

On a tender, we passed Cai Be floating market. Then we disembarked to see coconut candy being made and taste snake whisky, poured from a bottle containing vipers and the odd scorpion.

We toured the small town of Tan Chau by trishaw — a cycle rickshaw — and bought gorgeous hand-woven silk and rattan table mats for a few pounds.

Thirteen miles upstream, we crossed the border into Cambodia and sailed on to Phnom Penh.

The French-built capital boasts spectacular buildings including the Royal Palace, housing a pagoda with 5,000 floor tiles made out of silver.

Inside are hundreds of antiques, art and sculpture and a 90kg Buddha encrusted with more than 2,000 diamonds and a ruby as big as a plum.

Try to visit Phnom Penh before its beautiful riverfront and skyline are spoiled by skyscrapers built with Chinese money.

The city is still recovering after being ravaged by the Khmer Rouge regime, which killed around two million people from 1975-79.

Walking through the Killing Fields and S21 torture HQ, we met one of the few survivors of Pol Pot’s evil rule, which brings the shuddering horrors of it all that much closer.

Around 95 per cent of Cambodians are Buddhists and there are temples, pagodas and statues everywhere, together with orange-robed monks ready to bless you for a dollar or two.

I like to see what’s going on, so I sat cross-legged directly facing chanting monks at the country’s largest Buddhist monastery in Oudong.

Big mistake. Halfway through the ­ceremony, they took handfuls of jasmine buds floating in water and lobbed them at the congregation.

I was well and truly blessed — and wet. I dried out, but not for long.

We took an ox-cart ride and, there I was again, sitting right in line of the bony beasts when one sneezed all over me. I resisted the temptation to say “bless you”.

The locals laughed, but everywhere we went, we were met with smiles as wide as the Mekong — from village schoolchildren to the 89-year-old woman repairing a fishing net on tranquil Evergreen Island.

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We disembarked the cruise — along 416 miles of the 2,700-mile Mekong winding through the heart of South East Asia — at Kampong Cham and travelled five hours north by coach to Siem Reap.

You can book a post-cruise stay with AmaWaterways, to visit awesome Angkor Wat — one of the world’s largest religious monuments.

The temple complex — packed with tourists waving selfie sticks — features lotus-like towers rising 200ft into the sky and astonishing 12th-Century carvings.

But we went solo (having to think for ourselves again) and checked into the little Advaya Residence hotel, which costs from just £30 a night.

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We booked all our accommodation through Hotels.com, where you get one night free for every ten you book.

Our flights were with Turkish Airlines — great value, fabulous crew and brilliant food.

We reserved tours with isango.com, including to Angkor Wat and the floating fishing village Kampong Phluk, on Tonle Sap Lake.

All the brightly painted houses are built on stilts because the lake floods when monsoon rains pound Cambodia each summer.

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