Tonlé Sap Lake and Kompong Phhluk Village

About 15km south east of Siem Reap, is South East Asia’s biggest freshwater lake and the largest source of freshwater fish in the world.  For 3 months of the year, July – September, the lake floods from the melting snow of the Himalayas and runoff from the monsoon rains.

During this wet season a unique hydrologic phenomenon in the Mekong River causes the river to reverse direction, filling the lake instead of draining it, expanding the lake to 5x its normal size, filling the surrounding forested floodplain and supporting an extraordinarily rich and diverse eco-system.

There are several villages that are possible to visit in the Siem Reap floodplain area. On the advice of our trusty driver Sam, we visited one of the main ones,  Kompong Phhluk. This village is made up of many small houses built up on thin bamboo stilts 7-9 meters off the ground. During the wet season (now), the houses actually look like they are floating as the water level sits about 1m from the bottom of the houses, but they are actually just built this way to be close to the lake in the dry season and literally become a part of the flooded lake and can only be accessed by boat from June to October.

Passing through the village made on stilts

The village supports about 3000 families, with its own school and monastery. There are even restaurants within the village of stilts. The village is built there to make use of the great freshwater fishing in the area.  Over 75% of Cambodias inland fish come from this lake! So that is the reason these people choose this lifestyle as such.

The stilts are between 6 and 9 meters long.

Everything they do during the wet season is in this water. They use the lake to drink, prepare food, bathe, wash clothes, and even for their toilet. It’s truly an amazing sight to see, and a unique way of life.

Our boat broke halfway through the trip. The driver literally jumped in and started working on it.

We hired a remorque moto ( a little tuk tuk like detachable wagon that hooks onto the back of a motorbike) to get to the little town of Roluos, ($15 USD for the return journey, and Sam our tuk tuk driver came on the boat with us out to the lake) it was then another $20 USD per person for the boat ride 2+ hours. 20-30 minutes up the river to get to the village and edge of the lake. Then we just cruised about through the village, taking in the sights, and meeting some of the people. We stopped off at a little restaurant/house, where some volunteers were teaching the kids of the village how to make bracelets out of string to sell to tourists. This helps give the locals a supplementary income to just the fishing trade.

Some local villagers

From here we got some of the locals to take us on a small little wooden canoe ($5USD for 15 minute ride) through the mangroves. This gave us a much more up close and personal tour of the diverse animal life within the flood plains. We saw a massive tarantula (which is a great source of food for the Khmere people) a very large black toad, millions of spider nests and eggs, butterfly’s, birds, cicadas, millions of fresh water snails, and Dave even thinks he saw a monkey up in the trees. Just a beautiful peaceful escape from the bigger loud boats on the main river. The village people are pretty amazing with their paddling and boat steering skills, and all by using barely more than a rounded stick!

Taking a ride on a canoe through the mangroves

After the canoe trip we finally made it through to the actual lake. It looks so big you could be fooled into believing it was an ocean! We stayed out on the lake to watch the sunset before returning back in the dark with the many bugs. It was a pretty quiet trip home, as you couldn’t talk very well without getting bugs fly into your mouth. The only down fall of having an openair tuk tuk wagon!

Sunset over Tonle Sap Lake

If you come to Siem Reap during the wet season we'd highly recommend you pay a visit to the Kompong Phhluk Village and Tonle Sap Lake. You won't be disappointed.

All of the photos from our day at Tonle Sap can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/TonleSapLakeAndKompongPhhlukVillage?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Cheers for Now - 

Pamela and Dave