On our second day in Siem Reap, Cambodia, we hired our tour guide from the Angkor temples to take us to visit one of the floating villages on the Tonle Sap lake outside of town. Tonle Sap is a lake that was built during the Khmer empire, centuries ago, and is the largest lake in Cambodia during the wet season. The lake itself is enormous – 6200 square miles at its maximum and supports many villages and a whole economy.

It being the start of the rainy season, which was very delayed and had yet to even begin, there was almost no water in the lake. Nonetheless, it was interesting for everyone to see how people in rural Cambodia live.  The houses are all built on stilts as the water will come up to almost their doorstep when the monsoon is fully underway. The road in the pictures is of course submerged at such a time, and people get around by boat.

The water is really really low

 

We had very little time left in Siem Reap – about a day or so, and we mostly spent it at the pool, shopping, and seeing a circus – Phare. We had a great evening our last day there, eating dinner at Haven, a restaurant that hires, trains, pays, boards, and pays for the medical care of orphans who have aged out of the orphanages. We then went to see a terrific circus, Phare, which is a cirque du soleil type of show, in which many of the performers are from very poor and often, rural, villages.

Phare

Siem Reap