Tonle Sap Boat Trip (Floating Village)

Tonle Sap is a combined lake and river system. It is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia. So what is so special about this lake?
In Siem Reap, there is a community of people living in the lake. This place is called the Floating Village.

You can have a boat ride for 1 hour at the lake. USD15 per person. Here is a similar boat that we took. The weather is not good. Abit raining. Causing our shoes to stuck on those mud before entering the boat.
Floating Chruch. All buildings are floating.
Floating School. Where the children go to school. How? By rowing boats to there. Children here all know how to swim. In a small age, their parents will throw them to the water and they will learn how to swim.
Floating Basketball Court. A place to play basket ball and for wedding ceremory or funeral events too.

Life of the floating village. One whole family live in a small house. A family average income is around USD3-4 per day. Very poor people. They really depands on the river for their daily life, washing vegetable, bathing... etc. Mainly income of family depands on fishing and crafting. The tour guide even told us sometimes they will eat those water snakes and rats too. But they claim their rats are clean because their rats only eat fruits.
Boat full of goodies to sell.
Here the wave is very strong. Our boat is waving hard. Here is the end of the river and begining of the lake. It is dangerous to move forward so we move back.
This was near the end of the river and to the hige wave lake. The lady was rowing toward the boat restoran with full of fruits on her boat. We was worry that her boat might fall apart.

There is a small restoran on the lake for visitor to stop by. There have a place where they keep some crocodile for visiting purpose. The lake/ river have crocodiles, but crocodiles are only found on shallow waters. They don't go into deep waters.

The restoran also have seafood serve. You can order some freshy fish that they caught instantly. Here is a big map on the restoran of the tonle sap lake.

This picture we took for 1000Riel == RM1. This children using a bowl and row towards the floating restoran. Showing us this water snake. When we want to take picture of her, she refuse. Too bad I didn't have my sweets with me, so I gave her money. She smile happily and post this picture. After that she quickly row to another side and hand over the water snake to her friend and ask her friend to come. Gosh~ But to bad this time the dogs on the restoran notice and come barking at them. They were scare and quickly row away.

Me and TS of top of the floating restoran.
When reaching towards the end of the boat trip. The 2 kids on our boat show their skils on parking the boat to the river side. They were so exprience. Heard this kids were not pay to do these. They are relying on the customer tips. Poor kids. We gave them some money and you can see smiles on their faces.

When we reach the ground. Few locals rush towards us and selling us plates. Plates of our picture on top of it. Thats why we are wondering why they are taking our pictures when we are waking towards the boat. Each plate is USD3. Only one of my friend brought from them. I guess he feel pity on them.

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