At 2pm Savuth is ready and waiting and we are off on a true adventure to the fishing village of Kampong Khleng. This is an experience
If we thought the houses perched on the road were precarious, you cannot believe driving into this village. Houses hang over the Mekong river and canalthat leads to Tonle Sap lake, largest lake in Cambodia.
Stilts are about 50 ft high because this is all awash come monsoon season! Leftover red mud cakes everything, not dusty, and a truck that we can't pass is delivering fill to stop the road from disappearing. I guess in monsoon season, access is all by boat anyway. They have to recontruct a lot of these houses when the water subsides. The whole area is buried in water 3 months of the year.
The smell of rotting fish is pervasive. People plying the riverboats are blackened by sun and covered except for eyes in the heat of the day. Here they supply fish, clams, snails to Siem Reap and the whole area. A family might collect 4 sacks in good times, 90kg each, sold for $6 each to a middle man.
Savuth hires a boatman to take us up the canal, past all the houses which are larger than they seemed from the narrow road. There are a few larger tour boats with tourists, but few. Our smallboat would carry aout 6 passengers if the river was high, with a canopy which shades us some of the time from the bistering heat.
You are low in the water, we get stuck a few times, Savuth becomes 2nd mate to pole us off the bottom a few times, and the boatman has to cut weed from the prop several times too. When we pass other boats, returning boats very low in the water with their day's catch, there's a spray of red water full of what we called E&C when we were writing the Nova Environmenta Protection policy - effluent and contaminant! We try to keep our mouths shut if some sprays our way. I've had HepA once!!
It's a fertile plain so for miles we see green bean plantations, two huge commercial harvesters and clever crop spraying bamboo equipment which will be dragged by tractors. Corn is grown too.
Swallows swoop everywhere, and we spot beautiful egrets, and three crane-like birds visit, probably storks.
The fishing apparatus is simple, nets and smallbranches strewn in the shallow water to atract fish to your tiny piece of the river.
Clams are scraped off the rocks with large racks that look like enormous tennis rackets, the rocks all along the edge of the river are green and slimy, I don't think our Western stomachs could handle that!
On the main lake, house boats live out there all season, and move back in when monsoon comes. It's a virtual village out there, the fading sun gives good light, I've got some great photos today. The quiet sleepy village is now a hive of activity, families returning with their catch, including grandma, and buying and selling at the harbour. No ice or refrigeration here, keep them wet and get them on the trucks as fast as possible! Young men with good backs load sacks at a fast rate as they are weighed and recorded and paid for in cash.
Kids are coming home, kicking a football around, playing together, it's just like any other small town.
A very hard way to make a living. Every man has to be an engineer to keep these boats going and feed his family. Sustainability seems to be ensured because they are not fishing year-round this way.
This is all entirely different from what I expected of this day trip!
We are home at 7pm, all tired, a lot of driving for Savuth who was under the weather a bit from last night's wedding, and the Red Bull didn't seem to help a lot! It's a quick dinner along the road at Viroths again, and bed at 9pm.
If we thought the houses perched on the road were precarious, you cannot believe driving into this village. Houses hang over the Mekong river and canalthat leads to Tonle Sap lake, largest lake in Cambodia.
Stilts are about 50 ft high because this is all awash come monsoon season! Leftover red mud cakes everything, not dusty, and a truck that we can't pass is delivering fill to stop the road from disappearing. I guess in monsoon season, access is all by boat anyway. They have to recontruct a lot of these houses when the water subsides. The whole area is buried in water 3 months of the year.
The smell of rotting fish is pervasive. People plying the riverboats are blackened by sun and covered except for eyes in the heat of the day. Here they supply fish, clams, snails to Siem Reap and the whole area. A family might collect 4 sacks in good times, 90kg each, sold for $6 each to a middle man.
Savuth hires a boatman to take us up the canal, past all the houses which are larger than they seemed from the narrow road. There are a few larger tour boats with tourists, but few. Our smallboat would carry aout 6 passengers if the river was high, with a canopy which shades us some of the time from the bistering heat.
You are low in the water, we get stuck a few times, Savuth becomes 2nd mate to pole us off the bottom a few times, and the boatman has to cut weed from the prop several times too. When we pass other boats, returning boats very low in the water with their day's catch, there's a spray of red water full of what we called E&C when we were writing the Nova Environmenta Protection policy - effluent and contaminant! We try to keep our mouths shut if some sprays our way. I've had HepA once!!
It's a fertile plain so for miles we see green bean plantations, two huge commercial harvesters and clever crop spraying bamboo equipment which will be dragged by tractors. Corn is grown too.
Swallows swoop everywhere, and we spot beautiful egrets, and three crane-like birds visit, probably storks.
The fishing apparatus is simple, nets and smallbranches strewn in the shallow water to atract fish to your tiny piece of the river.
Clams are scraped off the rocks with large racks that look like enormous tennis rackets, the rocks all along the edge of the river are green and slimy, I don't think our Western stomachs could handle that!
On the main lake, house boats live out there all season, and move back in when monsoon comes. It's a virtual village out there, the fading sun gives good light, I've got some great photos today. The quiet sleepy village is now a hive of activity, families returning with their catch, including grandma, and buying and selling at the harbour. No ice or refrigeration here, keep them wet and get them on the trucks as fast as possible! Young men with good backs load sacks at a fast rate as they are weighed and recorded and paid for in cash.
Kids are coming home, kicking a football around, playing together, it's just like any other small town.
A very hard way to make a living. Every man has to be an engineer to keep these boats going and feed his family. Sustainability seems to be ensured because they are not fishing year-round this way.
This is all entirely different from what I expected of this day trip!
We are home at 7pm, all tired, a lot of driving for Savuth who was under the weather a bit from last night's wedding, and the Red Bull didn't seem to help a lot! It's a quick dinner along the road at Viroths again, and bed at 9pm.
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