The men on the riverbank seemed to be waving and we waved back. For three days, since entering Cambodia from Vietnam, we had been exchanging waves: in Vietnam people had been too busy to wave, but not in Cambodia.
'I don't think they are waving,' said someone. 'I think they're telling us to go away.' I looked again. The men were building a sandbag dam. And no, they were not waving but frowning, shouting too. Their gestures were unambiguous: they did not want the wake of a 48-passenger river cruiser washing over their barrier and into the village street. On a river cruise you're not only close enough to life on the bank to touch it; occasionally you become part of it.
Our passage was not as anti-social as it may sound. I was on the River Mekong in August, during the summer monsoon when the water is at its highest. There had been storms upstream in China. As every summer, the villages were not just at the mercy of the wash of passing ships, but of the climate all the way to the river's source, 2,500 miles to the north in Tibet.
Some were already inundated. Bicycles were wheeled down flooded streets; water lapped against the stilts on which the houses are built. Our afternoon landing was abandoned. In the words of the brochure, 'Published itineraries are an indication only and subject to sudden change.'
My ship was the Mekong Pandaw, one of a fleet of river vessels built of timber and character. They look like Victorian pavilions, supposedly recreating the first-class decks of colonial river steamers.
Victorians would feel at home. They might not understand the air-conditioning and Wi-Fi, the gym and cinema. They would certainly be bemused by the informality: you can wear shorts to dinner. But the dinner gong, the decorative palms, wicker chairs and the men who clean your shoes every time you return from the shore would all be familiar. As would the brass, teak and varnish. The ship is so heavily varnished it shines like a half-sucked toffee, and even the shower doors are wooden and louvred.
Pandaw River Expeditions makes a point of not having minibars ('tacky'), televisions ('annoying') or balconies. Instead, the cabins open on to a promenade deck where there are chairs. Better still, the top sun deck, shaded by awnings, extends the 200ft length of the ship. There's a bar at one end, sunbeds at the other and a pool table in the middle.
The seven-night cruise sailed from the Mekong Delta, nearly two hours' drive from Ho Chi Minh City. We cast off from the gnarled stones of an industrial quay, turned against the current and, amid a faint smell of fishmeal, headed upstream. The river, the colour of muddy puddles, was about 1,600ft wide. In our 300-mile voyage upstream it never got any smaller, or quieter. There was a constant snarl and splutter of passing craft. We anchored at night and by day could nose into the riverbank and walk straight into villages from a gangplank off the bow.
In Vietnam the itinerary included a fish farm, sweet factory and brick works. When we crossed into Cambodia the country immediately changed. Gone were the power lines, riverside industry and 5am loudspeaker announcements. ('Propaganda,' explained one guide; 'News,' insisted his boss.) Now there were trees, rice fields and cows at the water's edge. The tours changed too. No more workshops, but palaces, temples, monks and genocide.
Some 17,000 people died at Choeung Ek, an innocuous meadow dappled by trees near Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. It's one of around 400 killing fields. At the centre is a tall tower, designed like a Buddhist stupa, with glass walls. Inside there are 8,000 human skulls.
They're arranged on shelves, children at the bottom. Their only identification is in little round school-room stickers, red and green, denoting a person's gender.
Evil has never released Choeung Ek from its infection. After heavy rain, human remains become exposed in the burial pits that have still to be excavated. A sign asks visitors not to remove bones.
I left the ship at Kampong Cham, a five-hour coach ride from Siem Reap, where the cruise used to end. Two new bridges on the Mekong are too low for the Mekong Pandaw to pass. This means it can no longer enter Tonlé Sap, a UNESCO biosphere, and, with its floating villages, one of the most curious lakes in the world. A smaller Pandaw ship, the Angkor, can reach Siem Reap.
At Kampong Cham we tied up to a banyan tree. On the quay, a woman was crushing sugar cane surrounded by piles of coconuts. A family arrived in a sampan, fastened their boat to our mooring line and cooked breakfast. We were part of river life again.
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