I therefore decided to go to the 'floating village' on the Tonle lake, to keep myself occupied. Toby (the bar manager from Phnom Penh) had previously been a tour guide and recommended this.
The village, about 20km out of Siem reap cost about $25 US for the one and a half hour boat ride and the tuk journey, there and back....the more in your group, the cheaper it becomes...but there was only me...
On the way we passed lots of these type of contraptions ....
These are to catch crickets, which the Cambodians eat. At night, the piece of plastic is rolled down and the light bulb switched on. Crickets, attracted to the light, fly into the plastic sheet and drop into the pool of water at the bottom where they die, before being harvested by owners of the contraption.
Almost every house on the way to the lake had one of these.
The floating village itself was formed by poor Vietnamese and Cambodian families who came to fish on the lake...
The view from my boat. All boats heading in each direction were staying near the centre of the water ways as the water level was quite low...causing them to move pretty close by each other...
You can see by the sediment marks where the water level is in the wet season - the whole area's under water....
Most of the houses have a fish farm underneath then house where they farm catfish...
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Hammocks on the top deck are fairly popular..
Some of the poorest families have only a small house boat....
Children on the way to school ...
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On some boats they bred snakes (pythons) for meat...
And on another there was a crocodile farm. There are no crocodiles in this lake. They were brought from the Mekong river which runs through Cambodia and Vietnam.
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The crocs were fed on large catfish, bred in a holding area close by...
Unfortunately (for the crocodiles), they would end up as meat and the skins turned into belts and hand bags back in Siem Reap...
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This boat also had an interesting Souvenir shop which sold 'snake whisky' ...
..and had the nets people use to fish on this lake. The left picture shows the guide demonstrating how to fish ...very good :). The right is of the driver to my boat with someone else's kid...
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There was also a school and a 'scam shop' to which i was taken. They usually take tourists to these shops in order to buy soup or stationary for the children at hugely inflated prices...
A box of noodles cost USD 27 !!! I gawped at this and bought some exercise books instead, which still cost me 11 USD...i made sure i opened the packet before i handed them over, to make a re-sale by the teachers more difficult....
The children at the school..
On the way back, as i was the only passenger, they let me drive the boat. The accelerator was a wire under your foot which acted like a dead man's handle...if you took your foot off, the boat would stop...
...it was great fun...
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Looks like a scene from the 'African Queen'..... :)
All in all, i had a great day, i'd recommend this tour (just take your own exercise books for the school)...
I gave my motley crew a few dollars tip, they were a cheeky duo....
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