The Cambodia Experience - Tonle Sap

Y Thursday 30th April saw us up at 5.0am to leave at 5.30am for an amazing day. 

We had booked a private bird watching/ floating village trip with the Sam Vessner Centre. Our guide, So, was excellent alerting us to severe a different species on the way to the boat station. We drove for about an hour, passing through small settlements and farms. There were rice paddies, a duck farm, scraggy looking cattle, domestic fowl only one step away from jungle fowl, stilt houses, ox carts, buildings made from palm mats which looked as though one puff would blow them down...... All this along a dusty/muddy lane. 

We arrived at the 'port' located on a narrow muddy canal. The lake level is very low at this time of year. We were in a small covered boat, fortunately it had a shallow draught as we were to bottom on the mud several times out on the lake!

Tonle Sap us the largest freshwater lake in SE Asia, it is fed by the Mekong river and provides a living for 170 villages. There is a wonderful array of nets and fishing traps. However we were there to see the birds, we had been warned that we would not be able to go into the colony because of the low water level, but there were thousands of birds out on the water and the exposed mud flats. They were mainly the Asian Openbill, but we saw Pelicans, lesser and greater egrets, painted stork, glossy ibis(rare here), cormorants, watercock, white breasted waterhen, terns, swifts etc!!  Meanwhile the life on the lake was going on around us, an express passenger boat went by as well as lots of the smaller wooden hulled village boats and the fibreglass type which we were in. 

After two to three hours we made for one of the villages.So made arrangements for small wooden village paddle boats to take us on a village tour. At this time of year the houses, shops, church etc are quite close together, but when the river level rises they float further apart and tie up to large trees. We saw a crocodile farm, a mango tree growing on a raft, a fish farm and the general way of life. As in any community some of the houses were well built and maintained whilst others looked in poor condition. The children paddle themselves to school and there were 'boy racers' in fibreglass boats with motors. 

We had an excellent lunch there, fish soup, fried fish, rice and salad, followed by watermelon, and a beer, of course. I was feeling better but still not up to eating a lot.

There was even a shopping opportunity here! The local women have been taught to weave baskets and mats using the water hyacinth stems, which they dry. Water hyacinth is a noxious weed, but is put to good use for this purpose and the leaves are composted and used to fertilise the vegetable gardens on the rafts.

We made our way back to the port via a network of canals/roadways where the water was deeper, again we stopped to watch birds in  particular seeing a Little Green Beeater on a swinging branch fairly close to the water.  More birds were spend on the way home bringing the total number of species seen in the day to to 55!!! It was a long hot day but worth every minute.