Day 36 - Wednesday, Nov 20 - Tonlé Sap and Raffles

My flight to Delhi via Shanghai (sigh!) is almost at midnight, so Bella has arranged for me to use a room at the hotel for the day, for free.  I signed up for a half-day tour of the floating village “then chill on the Queen Tara” on the Great Lake, or so they say.  (Where did they learn “chill”?)  For someone who has lived in the Great Lakes region of America, I’m curious about this.  As for “chilling” when it’s 30°C outside...
       Luckily, it’s a wee bit cooler today and not quite as humid.  My guide Va picks me up and we’re off with a charming couple from Wales and five Czechs.  Our destination is Tonlé Sap (“lake of freshwater”), the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, fed by the Mekong River... and by rain.  (The lake doubles in size in the wet season.)  15,000 years ago, this lake was an ocean bay, totally flat.  Since then, the coast has receded, thanks to silt from the Mekong, whose headwaters are on the Tibetan Plateau.
       80,000 people live in four villages on and around Tonlé Sap, which is only about 10 miles (12 km) outside Siem Reap.  They have their own churches, police stations, schools and shops.  Villagers live 90% from fishing in the wet season and 10% from rice in the “dry” season, with three crops a year, each crop taking 2½ months, start to finish.  Some residents stay in place, in houses on stilts to accommodate a 23 foot (7 m) difference in annual water level.  Others live in floating homes that are towed from place to place by their boats, each boat with eyes painted on the bow to ward off evil spirits.

Lotus cutter

       There are plans to build three dams on the Mekong in Cambodia, for hydroelectric power, and others upstream, mostly along the Chinese section but also some in Laos.  The existing dams are already lowering the river’s level in the delta in Vietnam, with seawater infiltration killing the rice crops there.  Also silt is being trapped, making downriver land less fertile, as with the Nile, and some fish species are menaced, which is why locks are planned.  Va is worried “bad people” will go steal the fish from them.


The first two stops on our tour are to a lotus farm and to a workshop where the lotus is made into lots of products, including cutting the fiber from the stems and forming it into a long strands, like silk from the silkworms.  Tedious work.  One woman at a loom weaves the fiber into a linen-like fabric used to make suits and jackets.
      Then it’s onto our water tuk-tuk (with its noisy outboard) and off down the river past homes with no electricity; the rich have generators...  and TV antennas and wifi.  We stop by a crocodile farm where skins are sold for luxury shoes and such.  You can taste crocodile and snake jerky if you want, and I do.
       But just a taste; our lunch is farther along, on the Queen Tara anchored in the lake.  Simple fare - I have the sweet and sour chicken, my new Welsh friends choose the fried rice, and one of the Czechs the fish and chips (!).
       After lunch, we get back on our water tuk-tuk, accompanied by the bartender who we drop off on-shore.  Then off we head, by bus, on awful roads back to the hotel.  It’s been a pleasant half-day, and something very different from Angkor Wat, something I never would have seen otherwise.

First a shower (to wash off dirty lake water), then a short nap, I decide to treat myself.  I dress up - as much as that’s possible with my limited wardrobe - and tuk-tuk over to the Raffles Hotel for tea.  Raffles opened in 1932, in full Indochina splendor.  Photos scattered on the walls are of Jackie Kennedy, Charlie Chaplin (him again!) and Somerset Maugham, plus other celebrities who stayed here; I’m just an intruder.  Over tea and cakes, I ask the older woman in charge, “What happened to Raffles in the bad days?” (meaning Pol Pot’s reign), trying to be diplomatic.  She replies that it closed and Pol Pot’s men left it alone, except for ripping up the parquet floor, probably for firewood.  Her uncle, she says, fled to Thailand, as did my Cambodian friend in Paris, who fled as a child, all alone.
       After a delicious moment of luxury, I walk back to my hotel, to my borrowed room to repack.  Read a bit.  Have a Last Supper at the restaurant:  their lovely shrimp pad thai.  Then off to the airport, in the dark, by tuk-tuk.  And the long voyage begins:  Siem Reap to Shanghai to Delhi - what a detour!  22+ hours in all.
       I’m dreading it!

Raffles Hotel - Siem Reap