A Day to Remember

We woke up and headed to the Donlesat Lake, the biggest lake in South East Asia. The rural area surrounding the lake is completely under water due to recent flooding from the rivers and rain, so we were unable to take the van directly to our destination. This did not prove to be much of an obstacle however, as we were simply transferred from the comfort of our van to a small raft, hardly afloat in the murky flood waters. Without question, we teetered on to the raft, Mom, Dad, our guide and myself, and sat down cautiously, remaining as still as humanly possible for fear of dunking not ourselves, but the thousands of dollars of electronic equipment we had on our persons. I had a sneaking suspicion that, were we to tip, Dad might rescue the camera and iPads before thinking twice about Mom or me.

We were on the raft for 15 minutes, crossing the canal and entering small village, submerged in water. Most of the cows in the area had been corralled onto a bridge, though a few unfortunate outcasts were forced to stand in the water for lack of space. People sat in restaurants with their legs knee deep in water and small boats paddled by carrying fruits, baskets, tools, and large lumps of grass which had been gathered from the outer lake and brought back into the village in order to feed the cows. The overflow of water has prevented the local cows from being able to eat so most of them look like they are slowly withering away, their skin stretched tightly over their bones and joints. At a certain point, our raft was no longer capable of transporting us further due to the fact that we were taking on water faster than our guide could bail us out, and the way the locals had jimmy-rigged the entire village in order to continue going about their daily lives. We docked at what seemed to be just a tree at first glance, but a closer look showed that there was a small plank rested on floating tires meeting the tip of the raft and a man standing in the water next to it, inviting us to step aboard. With no where to go but forward, we couldn't help but laugh as we shuffled across a large system of balance beams forking out in every direction. We finally reached the dock, safe and dry, and boarded a larger boat to set off into the lake.

City Sidewalks

On the outskirts of the lake, we passed through a floating village. Houses and schools that are typically raised up on 10 meter stilts were now completely inundated in water equally as deep, if not more. Instead of cars and motor-scooters, the people got around by small wooden boats. As we passed through, I absorbed the sights, awe-struck. I couldn't help but admire the true strength of these villagers who faced such adversity, but instead of fleeing or just giving up, they found ways to deal with the situation they were put in. Chickens and pigs were kept in floating corrals made of bamboo, clothing and dishes were washed in the water, children swam and boated in the canal passing between the homes, large nets were strung up to bamboo poles jutting out from the water and atop the nets were thousands of shrimp, drying in the hot sun, and front 'yards' had been turned into large fishing farms.

A day at the market

We had lunch at a floating restaurant then headed back to the dock, crossed the planks once more, and took the raft back to dry land. We spent the rest of the afternoon viewing more ancient temples (most of them over 1000 years old), then too a ride in a cart pulled by cows. We finished the day with a ride up in a hot air balloon to get a bird's eye view of the ancient cities, then back to the hotel for a swim and a 2 hour massage.

bird's eye view

Can't wait to see what adventures I have in store for me in Phnom Penh!

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Advice of the day: There is a solution to every problem, you just need a little faith and ingenuity
Food of the day: Crocodile! BBQd it myself!
Word of the day: "Soo si Dae!" meaning "hello!" in Khmer (Cambodian)
Local interaction of the day: when we entered one of the temples we noticed a small boy taking our pictures, but thought nothing of it at the time. As we were leaving the temples, two young girls ran up to us trying to sell us souvenir plates. We politely said no thank you, but they were tenacious as always, and put them in our faces. Only then did we realizes that we were staring back at our own faces, which had been imprinted into the center of the plates. ....sorry to spoil your Christmas presents grandma and grandpa! ;p