2012 Cambodia - Siem Reap, Floating Village

After lunch on our last day we went to see the floating village that all our tuk-tuk drivers tried hard to sell to us. We bargained for the ticket, from $25 to $20. This reminds me of a friend saying in Africa you can even bargain for an airplane ticket.

The floating village is a dump and a rip-off. I will discourage people to go. Unless you're into slum visits and you enjoy feeling rich when you see poor people. We didn't ask to go there but the driver took us there anyway, then we got to the check-point and I said I just wanted to see it and not take the boat. This was not possbile. The driver persuaded us to pay then, because we said we'll come back at sunset. What sold it for me was that they said you would also see a mangrove forest.

We took an old rickety wooden boat, just for the two of us, despite the fact it had many seats. The boat driver didn't speak English. We passed the Gendarmerie, a newly refurbished house on tall stilts, and the same for the house of the Cambodian People Party. We then drove slowly into the village. A jumble of rather large shaks on wooden stilts, tall and dark as the sun was behind them. Made of corrugated iron planks and maybe some sort of dry bark or leaves, I'm not sure. There were platforms downstairs close to the water with firewood. There were also floating patforms with pigs inside.

The boat took us to a floating restaurant and a young woman came out and spoke to us in English. She said we had to pay $4 more to change into a smaller boat to go into the mangrove forest because our boat was too big. Nobody had told us that in advance so I said I', not happy about that because I already paid in advance. The woman kept saying "It's up to you". I will write a a review about this on the net, I said. They didn't seem to care.

We then drove through the mangrove forest, just on the main channel, which was beautiful. I felt relieved because I had felt afraid in the village with my big camera just the two of us on the boat. The forest was a short stretch and then we got to the open waters of the lake. We still had 1h to go of our 2h boat ride, the sun was up and had another hour to sunset, and our boat was wobbling quite dramatically. The water was muddy ochre, there was nothing on the horison but water and some submerged trees. Jay was the first to complain about the sea-sick movement of the boat. After another few waves I had had enough and asked to go back.

On the way back the village had come to life: children were going up and down the tall stairs to the houses, mothers were paddling the poats around, a girl was throwing water from the river onto the pigs in a floating cage, a mother was doing the same with her toddler. The woman from the restaurant was washing the dishes in the river.