Day 4 - Floating Village and goodbye to Siem Reap

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Our last morning and we were up early and enjoying a delicious breakfast outside under the umbrella in the balmy heat beside the pool - does it get any better than this? In my opinion - no way!

We quickly packed our bags (which didn't take long given that we didn't have much to pack), and met up with Suwan again who was prearranged to take us out to the Floating Village on Lake Tonle Sap. We sat back in the tuk tuk and took in all the sights and scenes that we passed on the way out to the lake. The housing on this side of town hugged the river which ran through Siem Reap and the standard looked to be pretty rough and basic. Poverty was very obvious and widespread. Suwan stopped to tell us about the rise and fall of the lake and that the current area of vegetation which looked exactly like farmland would be covered in water later in the year. The lake water level rises about 16 feet and would be lapping the road which was built high above the current "land". Houses were all built on stilts for this reason also and those that were built down low would be dismantled and transported up onto the hill during the "wet" season. It would be amazing to come back and see it for ourselves as it was very hard to imagine all this land full of water.

Suwan helped us hire a boat for our exclusive use for US$30 for a 90 trip out to the main part of the lake. Our rather chatty driver (he told us many times that he was studying English at night school and wanted to be a tour guide one day) drive the boat slowly and carefully out through all the hundreds and hundreds of houseboats of all variety of shapes, sizes and seaworthiness. There were houses, shops, schools, a police station, government office, fish farms, boat repairers, net repairers etc etc - you name it, they were there in the form of a floating version. A lot of "houses" had dogs wandering around in the limited space they had and I wondered whether these "pets" were kept to supplement their mainly fish diet? Who knows....

A bit further along our driver asked us if we were interested in buying some stationery and books for one of the local very poor schools. Well, what can you say to that without sounding like a total jerk? Of course we agreed and before we could say "Boat House" we were moored alongside the local General Store - floating variety. Now this is where the fun began. The shop proprietor was obviously well versed in this scenario as she met us with a package of books and pencils - asking price US$25!!! "You must be joking", I said. "Do I look like a fool?" After a bit of haggling, during which time I was feeling like we'd been totally scammed we finally settled on $10 and not a penny more! What a con - and for some reason, I felt like I should have known it was going to go down like this. Anyway, we were then dropped off at the local school comprising of one floating classroom complete with basketball court on the top to present our "gift" to the eagerly awaiting principal. I only hope the kids actually get to use the books, which by the way would have cost little more than a $1 in Siem Reap.

Our final stop and turnaround point was out in the Lake proper - here there were bigger vessels moored - and this is where the real vastness of the lake could be seen - it went waaaaaaay off over the horizon. Just a tad bigger than Lake Taupo! More like the Tasman Sea. Our driver dropped us off on one of the large multi-storey pontoons and showed us the crocodiles and asked if we wanted to have some food or drink and we could buy souveniers. We politely declined and asked if we could get going back in order to catch our flight. This didn't go down too well and took a little more persistance that should have been necessary. I think he must have had an arrangement from the owner and wasn't happy we went throwing our money around. The school episode had left its mark and the ride back was pretty quiet.
All in all tho' it was a very worthwhile and memorable excursion and despite our ripoff incident we really enjoyed ourselves.

We spent the rest of our afternoon lazing around the Day Inn pool and finished up sitting in one of the bars in Pub Street drinking cocktails watching the antics of a street performer and generally people watching. Great fun!!

Suwan took us to the airport and we bid him a fond farewell - a really lovely man whom I hope will do well in his life. We gave him $100 for driving us around for 4 days which we thought was a fair price as he refused to tell us what to pay. A bit tricky, but hopefully we got it right.

Our Bangkok Airways flight to Bangkok actually left 20 minutes early and in no time we were winging our way back over the Thai border reflecting on our experiences of the past four days. What an amazing time - a real highlight in our travels and one we hope our kids can experience for themselves oneday.

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