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Kompong Chhnang, Cambodia

This morning we took smaller boats to go tour the floating village of Kompong Chhnang. There are other similar floating villages on the Tonle Sap river and lake with about 3 million people either living on the water or shoreline here. The majority of the people living here are Vietnamese, although there is also a small Cambodian Muslim population here as well. Not surprisingly, most of these people live off of fishing. It was interesting to see the large number of houses and people here. They have some people who use their small boats to sell produce, household goods, and other items.The houses on the shoreline are on very tall stilts to help avoid flooding. That said, we were shown a house that was higher on the shoreline and on tall stilts which had a water line about a foot high from flooding in 2013. We finally saw our first Cambodian cat…we have only been seeing dogs so far. Our guide pointed out that virtually every house has some blue on it. In Cambodia, blue is the color of royalty so they try to make some part of their homes blue in honor of their royal family.

The Tonle Sap lake is the largest freshwater lake in southeast Asia, but it shrinks down a lot during the dry season. The Tonle Sap River connects the lake to the Mekong River is unusual as it changes direction of flow during the rainy and dry seasons. This area has a wide variety of wildlife and is a conservation area. They do have some huge Mekong Giant Catfish that can grow to 500 lbs! The fishermen aren’t allowed to keep these when they catch them as they are a protected species.

After our boat tour we had some downtime and lunch.

In the afternoon we went on a walking tour of Koh Chen, a village known for silver, bronze, and copper crafting. It is located within the Tonle Sap River. The local men forge the metals and the women do engravings. We got to watch some of them work. We also went to a local elementary school and got a chance to spend time with 3rd graders. They all wanted to practice their English on us. I spent time talking with two girls, 8 and 9. Their English was decent. We joined in with some boys going through an English workbook and ended up confirming animal names with animal sounds. Good times. The class also sang a Khmer song to us. I have the video on Facebook if you are interested.

We are staying in “port” (tied to a tree…literally) on the island where Koh Chen is. The cruise hotel director said that we are ported on this side of the river because the boat can get better wifi here. Sounds good to me!

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