Day 10 - Floating Village

The team needed an easy day after the Ankor Wat adventure, so a late start at 9.00am had us piling into the bus for the second last time to head out to the floating village. The road out to the village had recently been washed away by the floods, it took quite a bit longer to get there than it normally would. The drive took us past villages which are very poor and rice fields and homes which are still under water.

The floating village itself is an amazing place, all activities take place on the water, including schools, supermarkets and restaurants, almost all of the income produced in this area comes from fishing.

When the water gets too high out on Ton Le Sap Lake, the villagers move their homes into the mouth of the river so that they can be anchored to the bank, being out in the open water means that they run the risk of floating away.

This is one of the poorest areas of Siem Reap, there is no rent to pay when you live on the water, however, there is still the inconvenience of having to go everywhere by boat, many of the locals only own their houses, and do not have boats to move around in, so they have to rely on the traders coming to them. Most of the homes are structures on platforms held up by drums and not motorized, so once they have been towed to the bank, they will stay there from August until February when they move back out to the lake.

We visited the local tourist attraction, which was a souvenir shop, restaurant and crocodile farm which was all on one of these platforms.

We returned to the hotel for a free afternoon, which was spent by most of us, catching up on some last minute shopping. This was followed by a team dinner with our Habitat coordinator and chance for final goodbyes.

An early night for most as we are flying out to Ho Chi Minh on Monday morning.