Floating Villages

We spent our last couple of days in Siem Reap going to the floating villages and floating forest. The floating villages are a sight to see, to get there you take a local boat which slowly takes you down the river, passing children on their way to school, men fishing in waist deep water and tending to alligator traps. The floating villages are separated into three sections; the Muslims, Vietnamese and Khmers, although it’s almost impossible to see any differences. All of the homes/boats are the same with a handful of schools and temples/mosques scattered around the lake. Life for the people living on the lake is very primitive, everyone using the natural resources to survive. Most homes have bamboo cages with pigs, chickens, fish (mostly bottom feeders), and alligators. All of which are used for food while the alligator skin is used to sell back to the markets in Siem Reap. Mostly, fish is sun dried with salt and other seasonings as a preservative. The fish can last for months without rotting; needless to say the process has a strong odor. Tonle Sap Lake is pretty eerie, there is absolutely no visibility and an abundance of alligators and snakes.

The second day we went to the floating forest which is similar to the floating villages but on a different section of the lake. During monsoon season, the rivers rise and flow over the banks allowing you to take a small boat through the forest which seems to be floating. There aren’t many tourists at the floating forest, probably due to the long process of getting there. You take a tuk-tuk about 15 km outside of Siem Reap down dirt roads and passing by rural villages. You then need to hop on the back of a motorcycle for the rest of the journey as the dirt roads are in bad shape and cars/tuk-tuks cannot pass over them.

The motorcycle ride was longer than expected, about 20 minutes and down eroded paths, sand beds and at one point a flooded out section of road (where Matt’s motorcycle went down). It was an interesting ride to say the least! When we reached the river we watched our boat pull up, the driver shoveling out buckets of water before letting us on.

Life here is much like that of the floating villages,On this side of the river, you see stilt villages built to withstand flooding during the monsoon season. very primitive. After our tour, we went back to Siem Reap with one day left to do absolutely nothing. We’ve seen so much in such a short period of time, we’re both exhausted.

We’ve moved on to Sihoukaville, a beach town along the coast and about an 8 hours drive through the middle of Cambodia, where we’ll relax until going to Phnom Phen to fly back to Thailand.