Lake Tonle Sap

To give ourselves a bit of a change from temples we decided to take a trip out to Lake Tonle Sap. This is the largest Lake in Cambodia and could be likened to a huge reservoir of water for the Mekong. We had heard that it was well worth a visit so off we went.

I have already mentioned Hat, our Tuc Tuc driver. Well, he was keen to have as much time as possible with us (there is fierce competition amongst the drivers and several days can go by without a fare). He told us that he would take us in his Tuc Tuc. If you have ever travelled for two or three hours in a Tuc Tuc you will be able to imagine how wind-swept we were on arrival. It was a great adventure though, because you are open to the elements and travelling at quite a slow pace you get to see everything. We stopped and watched the harvesting of rice; stopped to buy tubes of bamboo stuffed with sticky rice, black beans and coconut juice, and then barbequed (scrummy); we brought sweets made at the roadside from palm sugar and just watched the world go by, it was fabulous.

It was amazing to watch the traffic go by and to see the strangest things on the back of motorbikes. We saw several bikes going in the opposite direction with really strange looking loads. It was only on closer inspection we realised that on the pillion seat, cross-wise, was a live pig, trussed up and lying on its back being taken to market I presume. When we saw this we thought we had just about seen it all until we saw one bike with three trussed up pigs on the back. Unfortunately we did not get a photo of the trio but we did of the one pig.

We saw trucks piled high with people going into town, flat bed carts being towed by rotavators and carts being pulled by buffalo, there were cows everywhere, it was a real experience.

When we arrived at the lake, a couple of tourist buses were just decanting their loads on to boats. Not the easy way for the Pointons - we were led to 'our own boat', and had a private tour of the lake. No luxury yacht, John kept looking at the steering mechanism of the boat, which had an old car steering wheel and a couple of ropes coming from either side of the rudder at the stern to the front, where there were a couple of turns around the steering column. There was another slack piece of rope tied to a bracket by the steering wheel which disappeared into a box at the stern. This was the throttle; driver rested his foot on it to take up the slack and pressed to go faster. All very high tech!!

The floating villages on the lake were extensive, all built on very high stilts and about ten foot clear of the water. They have to be built this high as the lake can swell dramatically in the wet season. Some of the houses looked quite affluent and others quite poor. What was very noticeable was the lack of rubbish in the water, clearly relying on the water for their livelihood has led them to respect this environment, I can't remember seeing one piece of plastic or paper or detritus of any sort.

Our boat took us past a school which was supported by the State of Carolina in the USA, there was also a US aid building, and a school run by Buddist Monks. We landed on an Island which has a small market and a Buddist temple. As we approached the Island it was obviously time for the primary children to go home. All these children got into boats to go home, there was no adult to take them, no life jackets, just half a dozen of them in the boat all rowing off to their homes, perhaps we don't give our own children enough freedom and responsibility.

Hat was very good and told us about the different people who populate the river, some were from Cambodia and had worked the river for generations, others were locals who picked up work when ever they could and some were from Vietnam who came on a seasonal basis to catch fish. We had a great day and then had our journey back to town in the Tuc Tuc again ...I loved it