The Floating Villages

Siem Reap, in northwestern Cambodia, was probably the highlight of my time so far in Cambodia. We were there June 14th-18th, but it'll take me more than one blog post to get through everything that we saw and did there. Sorry I'm so slow at this, but I do actually try to do SOME work while I'm here working.

On Friday, June 15th, we were able to visit Tonlé Sap, which is a large, freshwater lake near Siem Reap that empties into the Mekong River as it travels toward Phnom Penh. When we got to the lake, we loaded onto a fairly small wooden (but luckily motorized) boat.
It was over an hour across a big part of the lake, until we got to the floating villages. Even though the name "floating village" pretty clearly outlines what you're going to see, it still can't really prepare you for everything out there.

The first thing that we went to out on the lake was the water treatment facility that is run by RACHA, and was paid for by the LDS church. The facility itself was about 50 feet by 30 feet (I'm really bad at estimating things like that... so I could be off by a lot), so it felt pretty small, but they do incredible things there. They are able to take water from the lake and purify it to drinking water and sell it at a remarkably discounted rate. Also, to add a little perspective, all water in Cambodia is not safe to drink so everyone always drinks bottled water. It isn't simply a luxury to have bottled water, it is a necessity.

It was really interesting to learn about how they are able to distribute water to people on the lake, and how they are able to advertise their service. It was also incredible and mind blowing to see how people go about their daily lives while living on a lake.

This was certainly not the land of comfy houseboats that you see at Lake Powell, but they certainly made it work. Children take small wooden boats to school, there are little food boats that roam around selling food just like the carts do in the streets of Phnom Penh, they have floating cell phone shops, and when the water levels change, they can tow their houses behind a boat and move to a more favorable location. It's kind of ingenious actually. I have a ton of pictures of everything we saw out there, but I don't have room to put them all on here.

After we had visited the two RACHA water treatment facilities, we visited a floating restaurant/shop for a little bit. I had to (got to?) walk across a crocodile pit, see a mom put a Burmese Python around her infant's neck, and play with children who lived on the lake in pots and pans from the kitchen.

This was probably definitely the furthest I have felt from home.