Last night we are at a restaurant recommended by our lonely planet book called pots and pans. It did not disappoint the food was great, but the waiters didn’t understand why we were ordering no meat! We had a couple of beers here and then wandered around. We saw some lights coming from a high-rise and it was a skybar which looked interesting, it was a bit of a disappointment, the drinks were overpriced and all the flies were all over the place, we swiftly left after our drinks.
We got picked up at 10am from our hostel to go to the two floating villages by boat. The other family in the tie were Australian and nice to chat to. On the drive to board the boat all of the buildings and bars were on stilts above lush green rice paddies, in the wet season the farming converts from rice to fishing as the fields are flooded entirely. It’s the dry season just now but the rice paddies are boggy and the green colour compared to the rest of the dry country was noticeable
The floating villages are 2 different kind, true floating, which moves up and down the river with the tides that changes, and stilted which prevent the houses from getting flooded in the wet season.
First up was the true floating village, made to float with either bamboo or, more recently, oil drums.they have everything from houses churches and schools. The river around is filthy and murky.
Before heading to the next village we first stopped off at a crocodile farm, it wasn’t nice, there must have been 30+ crocs in a small compound at water level with 2 small pools, apparently there’s very few and far between wild crocs now. The tour guide tried o moly the crock farm was for tourist benefit but next to the crock compound was a shop selling every product you can think of made from their skin.
It was upsetting to see but it’s no different to intensive farming back in the UK and at least all of the animal is used with very little waste!
We then had lunch aboard a big ship, it was decent food actually, and strange that things that seemed fixed were moving around you and weren’t in the same place as when you got on. We had lunch with the Australians and chatted for about an hour.
Back on the boat we had a looonngg, finally we passed a few floating shacks with signs ‘crocodile meat restaurant’ and crocodile compounds attached. We had to get off at one of these for a long boat trip through the mangroves, not only were there crocs caged but also a huge python, and a rabbit 😥. The mangrove boat ride was nice, there were many many boats all with ladies sleeping waiting to take tourists. It lasted around 15minutes and around there were lots of underwater traps, catching probably anything that dared move! At one point we went off the ‘track’ through the mangroves and the lady picked a bunch of flowers from the trees for the women, I reluctantly took it but my first thought was all of the insects that it may hold.
The final stop was the stilted village which topped the trip off. At the moment you can walk right through it but in the wet season it appears floating. All of the shacks were on 10ft high wooden stilts.
Few vehicles were present and he kids were having a ball running around playing football. Along the sand track they were drying shrimp that they had caught from the river.
We got to watch the preschool age learn the English alphabet, each child had to go up and recite the board along with the rest of the class, but it was just rope learnt and we are pretty sure they had no clue what they were saying
At the top of the village, on high ground was a temple and then round the corner more streets similar in character. There was a total of 3500 people living in the village. On the next road there was loud music and there was a wedding party in a Marquee just in the middle of the track.
At this point we got a minibus pick up and headed back to Siem reap.
On the way home we popped into a local shop and got a new vest each for one dollar a piece.
Once we were back at the hostel I popped to get us a snack from the supermarket and a HUGE rat ran across the road directly in front of me, from one bar to the next, it was the size of a cat!! The lady working in the bar screamed and I quickly shot by…. Probably a good job we fly to Phnom Penh in the morning!!!
South East Asia 2019 