Floating village, Tonle Sap Lake

---

If I ever wake up from the dream about being out in public in my pyjamas I hope that I am in Cambodia when it happens. Nightwear makes perfectly acceptable day wear here - especially if it is in a ‘Hello Kitty’ print!! Although a westerner in her pyjamas in broad daylight may still raise eyebrows, even here??!

Random musings aside, this morning Vi met us at 8.30am to take us out to Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, so that we could visit the floating village. On the way out, he pointed out his home on the riverbank in a small village between Siem Reap and the lake.

The whole floating village tour is a bit of a circus. When we arrived there were tour groups everywhere!! We bought our tickets (US$20/head) to be taken out to the village by boat, not knowing if we were going to be grouped in with other tourists or not? With our tickets in hand we ventured down to the dock where we were pounced on and taken out in a boat on our own with a boat driver and a guide.


Because it is the dry season we had to travel a fair distance along a muddy channel before we were actually in Tonle Sap Lake. Despite the appearance of the water in the channel there were locals fishing along the banks - and catching reasonable numbers of fish too! Apparently the waters of the Tonle Sap are one of the richest sources of freshwater fish in the world because of the unique ecosystem that comprises the extremely fertile forest catchment areas, the lake itself and the Mekong River. It is a delicately balanced system that is currently threatened by damming and logging activities.

Out in the lake itself our guide told us that there was currently only about 2.5m of water where there are 10m during the wet season. Nothing showed the high and low water levels more dramatically than the pagoda currently perched many metres above the water on its pylons! The quirkiest thing we saw was the floating basketball court where the kids often go after school for a game!

We stopped for the obligatory shopping opportunity at the floating viewing platform/shop. In addition to the shop they had the novelty tourist ‘attractions’ of the fish farm (driven into a wildly thrashing feeding frenzy photo op when a scoop of food was thrown in), some sleepy looking crocodiles, some juvenile shrimps (disgusting, alien looking things) and some water snakes (UGH!!).

After safely clambering over temple ruins for three days without slipping, tripping, stubbing a toe or falling, I almost came to grief descending from the viewing platform. Despite being very careful (or so I thought) I sort of slid down the bottom half of the steps. I think it was lucky I was holding on and was able to sort of save myself from complete catastrophe by pretty much hanging from my left arm as I sorted out my feet??!! There was also a very sweet Chinese (?) lady whose reflex reaction was to attempt to catch me as I came sliding down the steps towards her. She helped me get my feet back under me and I made it back to the deck without being badly injured. I thanked her profusely and feeling very embarrassed, continued our tour of the shop.

From the viewing platform we were taken to the floating stationery shop to buy outrageously priced pens and exercise books. The plan was that we were going to bring these from home, but we were not sufficiently organised to actually make the purchases in Australia and lug them all the way here!! Very bad economics! As usual we couldn’t bring ourselves to bargain the price down we just paid the asking price knowing that we were probably being robbed blind?!

After the stationery shop it was off to the floating school, where we delivered the pens and exercise books to the children. The cynic in me thinks that the books and pens probably go straight back to the stationery shop to be sold again to the next day’s tourists???? Even if that is the case, I guess the transactions form an integral part of the village’s cash flow/economy these days??! And at least you are paying for an ‘experience’ rather than just giving money away.

From the school we motored back to the dock trying for an elusive shot of a fisherman casting his net into the water. Our timing was pretty off, with most of the fishermen dragging their nets in or emptying their nets of fish, rather than casting them, as we went by. I think we probably passed about a dozen fishermen, but only had one opportunity for a net casting ‘shot’.

As we approached the dock our guide started talking with Bernie about the appropriate monetary value for a tip for the driver and himself. He was offended when Bernie showed him US$2.00 so we ended up having to tip our driver and guide US$5.00 each! We would have tipped them anyway, but you feel really annoyed with them when they start asking for a tip before you even have the opportunity to give them one voluntarily. I guess there are a lot of thoughtless tourists who would think nothing of enjoying their services without tipping so they have been conditioned to get in first rather than miss out??!!

We met up with Vi again and he suggested that we stop at the lotus farm on our way back to Siem Reap. We stopped by the roadside and snapped a few photos of all the pale pink lotus flowers from the road. They farm the lotus for their stems as much (or more) than for the flowers as there are some traditional Cambodian dishes that include lotus stem as an ingredient. We didn’t realise until we set off again that we could have gone down amongst the lotus flowers, although there were signs up indicating that that experience would have cost us a couple of dollars each. C’est la vie! I think the elevated shots are quite good anyway??!!!

Vi dropped us off for another massage when we arrived back in town. We didn’t really take note of the time on Monday, but today we made more of a point of looking at the clock when the girls started. We are pretty convinced that we were short changed earlier in the week, with our massages ending quite abruptly with very little work on our backs, necks and shoulders. Today we enjoyed a much more comprehensive back, neck, shoulder, head and face massage before we were done. And these girls didn’t actually ask for a tip when they finished, so we tipped them twice as much as we did the girls on Monday!! Bernie thought the girl that massaged him on Monday was a brute, but decided that she actually went pretty soft on him compared with the ministrations he received today!!!

Vi dropped us back to the Kool Hotel and we settled up our account with him for the last four days. The only hint that he had given us regarding price was that Kerry paid him US$15/day when he took her out on the back of his motorbike. With him using his tuk tuk to transport the two of us we were really a bit flummoxed as to a fair price to pay him. We settled on $US90 because he was very obliging about fitting in with us and looked after us very well. He seemed very pleased with this amount saying that we had tipped him too much. I gave him a calendar of Australian wildlife for his family, which he said that his nephew would enjoy. I also gave him an Australia flag lapel pin for himself and a Kangaroo lapel pin for his nephew which he seemed very pleased with.


We opted for some more relaxation by the pool for our last afternoon in Siem Reap before popping into the town again for dinner. Bernie sampled another very traditional Cambodian dish tonight opting for a beef lok lak. I ordered a stir-fried beef with cashew nuts which arrived with the beef still slightly pink. Ordinarily it wouldn’t worry me to have the beef slightly rare, but in the circumstances, I decided to ask for my meal to go back to the kitchen for another couple of turns in the wok!! I felt much more confident about it when it came back to me well done.

Back at the Kool Hotel we happened upon Adelaide and Peter (from Portsmouth, who we met out by the pool a couple days ago) playing cribbage in the downstairs lounge. We ended up sitting with them for about an hour chatting about our respective travel experiences before heading up to our room to finish re-packing our bags for our flight to Vientiane in the morning.

---