Floating villlage

Today I took a day trip to visit the floating village of Kampong Kleang, although it is really a stilted village.  About an hour drive from Siem Reap, Kampong Kleang is built on the shores of Tonle Sap, a huge lake.  During the rainy season, the Mekong runs into Tonle Sap, raising the water level in the lake several meters.  During the dry season, the Mekong reverses direction as water runs out of Tonle Sap back to the Mekong Delta, lowering the water level in the lake by several meters.  They have an annual event in Phnom Penh to celebrate the change of direction of the river.

The houses in Kampong Kleang are built on stilts high enough for most high waters although there is occasional flooding.  Pictures tell this story best.

The main street of Kampong Kleang

A house made of banana leaves.  It lasts about two years.

View of houses from Tonle Sap

More houses

The school

A school bus.  Four children rowing across the "street" since there are houses on both sides.

The church

Real floating houses where the Vietnamese live

More of the Vietnamese neighborhood

Moving day

This frame will be rebuilt on now that the water level has dropped

No one else had signed up for my tour today so I had a private guide and personal driver in a Toyota Camry, as well as a boat driver.  I single handedly employed three Cambodians today.  My upwardly mobile guide, Sophon, is the son of a farmer from a very rural area eighty kilometers from Siem Reap.  Although his mother never went to school, his parents pushed the children to be educated.  Sophon was sent to five different elementary schools, and then to live with monks in Siem Reap so he could finish high school.  He told me he was lucky because his older siblings had been educated before the Khmer Rouge came to power.  I'm not sure how that was lucky.  His father was an official in Lon Nol's government, so he had to go into hiding when Pol Pot came to power.  His oldest sister died of starvation during the civil war before Sophon was born, and he was not told for years that there had been one more sister. 

After finishing school, Sophon, who is Rachel's age, tried to go home but his parents insisted that he stay in Siem Reap.  He worked in construction and odd jobs until he saved money to buy a motorbike and he became a moto-cab driver.  Then he was able to move up to tuk-tuk driver.  He taught himself Japanese and English, was a guide at Angkor Wat for a short time, and eventually landed a job with this tour company.  His wife is a receptionist at a hotel and they have a two year old.  He also feels responsible for an eight year old boy that his parents adopted or took in.  The boy's parents divorced, the father disappeared, and the mother ran off to Thailand.  Sophon considers the boy his son.

I couldn't make this stuff up.