December 26, 2007
Siem Reap - Chong Kneas: We cycle to the Tonle Sap
On Wednesday we take an easy morning outing to the floating village of Chong Kneas south of Siem Reap. The town of Siem Reap stretches quite a distance along the banks of the Sangker River before the houses and huts, some perched on stilts four meters high, give way to bright green rice fields, and finally the road loses itself in the Tonle Sap lake.
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The school, the post office, the police station, homes and markets float on the Tonle Sap. In the dry or wet season, the floating houses can be accessed by road, in the rainy season only by boat. This time of year things are getting pretty dry and many of the boats are moored and can be entered using a gang plank from the road.
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We hope to get some first-hand information on the boats running from Chong Kneas to the town of Battambang. We have a conversation with one of the many young people. He speaks excellent English as many boys and men, but never women. We find out that boat reservations are made in Siem Reap, not here. I ask him where he learned English and he tells us that after his parents died in the Killing Fields, he spent eight years in the nearby monastery, Phnom Krom, and went to school there. Now he is learning Japanese and Chinese. His future is in tourism. We have since learned that many young men thank the Buddhist monasteries for their knowledge of English - a privilege girls do not have.
By 9:00 there is a traffic jam on the narrow dust road. Busloads of Japanese and Chinese tourists are arriving for a boat ride on the Tonle Sap. But our outing is finished and we head back for town where we book tickets to Battambang by boat for the next day.
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