It’s our final day in Cambodia, and also our final day together for a while as Coman flies back to London tonight and I continue on to Hanoi for a whole new adventure. However we’ve got a pretty special trip lined up before we head our separate ways, seeing a very different side to the Cambodia we’ve experienced so far.
We’ve got all our bags stowed in the car as we drive south towards the vast Tonle Sap lake, the largest body of water in South East Asia which stretches 30 miles wide and over 100 miles long, to visit the indigenous communities who live on both its shores and waters, in their floating villages. On the way, Nak opens up about the political regime in Cambodia and its corrupt and repressive nature and it reminds us how lucky we are to live the lives we do.
Driving through villages
Another reminder becomes clear as we bump down un-tarmacked roads and through villages where families are crowded into houses on stilts to protect themselves from both flooding and snakes. Eventually we come to the lakeside town of Kompung Kleang, whose jetty is overshadowed by a giant Buddha statue proferring a begging bowl.
We board a motorised boat, with a stern but smiley woman at the helm, and set off down a tributary towards the lake. At first the banks are full of houses with huge beams raising them high above the waters, but Nak explains the lake is very low at this time of year, in fact much lower than it should be due to a combination of China damming the Mekong further north and climate change bringing longer than usual seasonal droughts. When the lake is full the waters of the tributaries come to the back doors of the houses, but right now those doors are a good twenty to thirty feet above the waterline.
Once the houses recede we power along past families diving in the waters with nets to trap fish, and working in the paddy fields that stretch in vast rich and fertile plains either side, growing both rice and huge crops of kidney beans for export. In the rainy season the lake is over 125000 sq km but right now, in dry season, it’s just 25000 sq km. At its peak it’s over 12 metres deep but is currently less than two metres in depth meaning the floating villages stay roughly in the same places making them easier to find.
On the lake
We pull up and weigh anchor amongst a flotilla of houses floating on barrels, watching daily life going on as beautiful birds flit around – heron, egrets, terns and more. After 20 minutes or so we head back the way we’ve come, past a watchtower on a huge concrete structure that must be at least 60 feet high, which apparently the lake at its seasonal height can reach.
The little farming shacks we see on the riverbanks, with families living in them, are apparently dismantled and taken away during the rainy season as the waters rise to completely cover the trees and mangroves, which spring back to life and bloom once the waters recede. Right now we can see the elaborate root systems stretching down to the shallow waters we cruise along.
Lake life
It’s well past lunchtime by the time Nak and Jip have driven us back to Siem Reap to check in for our separate flights. Coman is flying to Hong Kong before a long overnight flight back to the chilly environs of London, and I’ve got a short flight north to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
We spend our final hours together in the very nice first-class lounge, eating and drinking to our hearts’ content, before saying our goodbyes, keeping our emotions in check for fear of setting each other off.
I watch Coman walk to his gate until he disappears from view in the throng… and then pour myself a very large glass of wine to wait an hour until my flight is called. Our idyllic three weeks of sightseeing and sunshine together is at an end, and what comes next is going to be very different.
