This morning everyone ate breakfast on our boat. Then we all took a walk along the river bank. I took Cha-Cha-Cha along. As children on their way to school passed us, we interacted with them. It was fun to see their reactions…lots of smiles and laughter.
We stopped to talk with a young woman who was working outside her house. She invited us inside to show us her partially finished house. It reminded me of when we moved into our house.
We walked for a while then returned to the boats. A short while later we stopped at a Toddy shop and tasted their coconut beverage that doesn’t taste alcoholic in the morning but becomes that way by evening. They served three appetizers with the drink: muscles, tapioca coconut, and curry. As we were leaving, I went inside the shed where they made the appetizers.
The crew surprised us by serving a traditional lunch on palm leaves the size of placemats. They spooned a lot of traditional foods onto each of our palm leaves, then we ate everything with our right hands. I thought the food was delicious, and it was a fun experience.
For the next two hours we relaxed. Some people napped in their cabins, but I spent most of the time on the deck watching the local people and the scenery as we cruised through the water.
At 4:30 we disembarked and walked through a small market place where we looked at fresh vegetables, dried fish, peanuts, and other items for sale. We walked along a path where we passed homes, rice fields, people, and motorbikes.
Then everyone got back onto our boat and cruised to the place where we would dock for the night. The sun was setting. Some walked along the path to see an unobstructed view of the sunset, but I took pictures from inside the boat where I got some unusual shots of the sun setting behind the palm trees.
We all had dinner on our boat, then we went to our cabins to get ready to leave the boats tomorrow morning after breakfast.