Sunset on Tonle Sap

[khiemtran]

Come with me this week, as we go on a tour to watch the sunset on Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's miraculous great freshwater lake. In the dry season, it occupies two percent of Cambodia's surface area, but in the wet season that grows to ten percent, and the water level can rise by up to ten metres.



Here we are about to board. We'll be in a much smaller boat than the ones you can see here.



Heading along the canal to the lake. The traffic here is much like the traffic everywhere else in Cambodia.







The sides of the canal aren't that picturesque by daylight. Rubbish seems to be everywhere, although it does give an illustration of how much the water level can vary.



As we reach the end of the canal, we find a floating village. These villages need to keep moving as they gradually pollute the water around them. When a villager dies in the wet season, they also need to inter the bodies in floating mausoleums, far away from the village, until it is dry enough to cremate them.



Only now does the scale of the lake become apparent. It spreads out before us like a vast inland sea. In the wet season, as melting snow in the Himalayas floods down the Mekong, the waters back up behind the Mekong delta and actually reverse course to flow into the lake. As the lake expands, huge areas of forest become flooded, giving the lake a rich source of nutrients. The constant flooding of the lake was the engine at the heart of the Khmer civilisation, just as the Nile was for Egypt, and working out how to control the variation was one of the great achievements of the Khmer empire.



The best houses float on empty oil drums. Poorer ones float on bamboo. Many have fish farms (see the netted structures beside the houses). The cluster of poles in the foreground is actually a mooring point.



Kids home from floating school. This was actually a Vietnamese school. There are three different groups on the lake. Besides Khmer Buddhists, there are Muslims and then Vietnamese (who are often Christians).



Our next stop is a floating fish and crocodile farm, complete with sunset-viewing platforms.



I did question the wisdom of raising crocodiles when you live in a floating village, but I guess there are crocodiles outside anyway...





Watching the sun set form the viewing platform.



Heading off again, we explore the rest of the village.



We see a floating church.



And a floating kindergarten.



And these fish traps on the shore.



And then it's time to head back home along the canal...

Comments

[soon_lee]

Lovely photos. We were there this time last year. This makes me nostalgic.

Another curious fact: Tonle Sap river changes direction depending on season (flows into the lake in the wet season & out to the Mekong River in the dry season).

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'll be posting about the temples over the next few days (once I've culled approximately 700 photos down to something more realistic) and I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.

[soon_lee]

We did Vietnam & Cambodia with Intrepid Travel & had a wonderful time. I also discovered that I am even more of a food obsessive than I thought: I was looking forward to my next meal almost as much as the next tourist attraction.

Our local guides (we had one for Vietnam & one for Cambodia) were excellent & once I convinced them that yes, we really wanted to eat local food, their recommendations were reliable. The problem with going on a tour is that they have to cater for a range of tastes & some of the places that serve both local & "western" food didn't do a great job of doing either.

Favourite bit of Vietnam: Hoi An
Favourite bit of Cambodia: Siem Reap

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

We did a package tour with a local company, but while the food was good, we got a bit buffet-ed out by the end of it. Our best meal was at a very nice Khmer restaurant in Siem Reap that had an excellent banana flower salad and some wonderful fish.

[88greenthumb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing these wonderful photos. They bring back great memories of my visit to that same floating village in October 2012.

Coincidentally, I did notice those rubbish snagged by/on the bushes/trees, as well! ;)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, it certainly makes me realise just how pristine my local rivers are by comparison.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was thinking of your photos!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you very, very much. I'm going to reblog some of your photos from Flickr to Tumblr (it automatically credits you and people can click back to Flickr--is that okay?)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Of course that's okay! I'm still sorting through my Angkor photos, but I'll post some of the temples soon too.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

Every time I have been in Cambodia, it has been the dry season, so have never experienced this. Thanks for the great pictures!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Actually it's also the dry season now, but it will get a lot drier as the year goes on.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Wow! Fascinating photos and post. Thank you.

I'd heard of floating villages, but I hadn't really thought of all the practicalities - churches and schools and dealing with pollution...

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

They also have villages on stilts along the side of the lake, which are designed to cope with the extreme variation in water height. And all the roads need to be elevated too.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Very cool, and nice photos. I had no idea such a place existed; thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. It really is a fascinating area, and the behaviour of the Mekong and the lake has had a huge influence on the civilisations in the area, in much the same way as the Fertile Crescent or the Indus valley.