Floating Village

Angkor Wat is the primary draw for tourists to this area, and many Asian tourists come just for the weekend. Being Sunday, our Tuktuk driver, Wan, encouraged us to wait till Monday for Angkor Wat and he would take us to the Floating Village today. OH NO! We were both alarmed at the thought of being captive in another expensive market place. But this was the Floating VILLAGE, not the market, and all fees were presented up front. We consented and were so glad we did.

The dirt road to the floating village was lined with homes. All shacks of different sizes and shapes, most up on poles and very impoverished. The houses ended at a muddy area with a shallow inlet which contained rows of long narrow boats. We boarded and quickly found ourselves in a line of boats with gawking tourists slowly maneuvering through the muddy channel. Our captain was a boy that looked no more than 16, barefoot, and thin like the boat itself. He controlled it using a complex looking combination of various pedals, ropes and poles.
The small channel opened into a large river and soon little homes started popping up along the water, and not on the banks, for there were no visible banks. The homes were built high on stilts about 20 feet above the current water level. The water was about 10 feet deep at the time and was expected to drop even more during the dry season.

Many homes were as primitive as possible, made from poles, straw and perhaps sheet metal. Others were nicer with real wooden walls and plaster. All were reached by narrow ladders or rough looking steps. We stared as a tiny old woman with a hunched back struggled to pull herself up a crude pole ladder. Little floating wooden platforms were everywhere forming boat docks, places to dry and store firewood and for holding caged animals.
Our young driver showed us his home as we floated by. It was one of many so clumped together it was hard to distinguish one from the other. He said the population of this village was about 3000 and extremely poor. Most of them made their living from people like us who came to stare in amazement at their way of life. During the rainy season, the water rises almost to the floors of the homes which at this point towered overhead.

We docked temporarily at a small floating platform that housed a restaurant. We decided to take an optional $5 excursion through the flooded Mangrove trees. We clambered onto a tiny old boat barely large enough for the two of us, and a young girl sat in the front and paddled us thought the trees. She appeared to be about 12 yrs old and very timid; her voice was soft spoken and we never could make out her name although we think it started with either an S or a V, or maybe it was an A.
At the conclusion of the small trek thought the trees we had a very tasty meal at the restaurant, and then we were back on the first boat. We followed the river past the remainder of the homes and into what appeared to be an ocean, except it was strangely quiet. The only bank visible was the one we just came from, and that consisted only of densely populated Mangrove trees.

The trip back thought the village and then back to our waiting TukTuk was silent and somber. We reflected on the lives of these people and thought how grateful we are to live in a land where our water is controlled by a faucet and knowing that if we fell out of bed we would only hit the floor.