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Cruise News for the Corporate Travel Professional

July 2013 Edition

Pandaw new river ships to go ultra shallow

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Pandaw River Expeditions has announced that it is constructing two new ultra shallow vessels in Burma, with the Sinmalike shipyard in Rangoon awarded the contract to build the two K plus class vessels of 56 meters length with 20 deluxe staterooms, a new design, with an ultra shallow draft of less than a meter, enabling these ships to pass through very shallow channels at low water.

The RV Kindat Pandaw and the RV Kalaw Pandaw, will be finished in traditional Pandaw style with teak and brass, with Pandaw saying their ships are unlike other river cruise ships being exact replicas of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company ships of the 1920s with spacious promenade decks running around them.

Pandaw founder Paul Strachan said, "It is wonderful to be building again in Burma where we started nearly 20 years ago and there is a lot of ship building know-how there and we can achieve the ultra-shallow drafts so essential for the extreme low water conditions now prevailing.”

“Last year vessels of over one meter draft could not pass from Pagan to Mandalay for over 3 months during the peak of the high season and at Pandaw we cannot let this happen."

The Kindat and Kalaw will operate on the new Mandalay Pagan Packet service starting in July 2014 together with the Indochina and Orient, with the 4 ships offering a total capacity of 100 cabins and 200 pax between the destinations weekly, with the Mandalay Pagan Packet a stand alone product in and out of Mandalay International Airport doing away with the need for hotels or domestic flights.