Lake Living
Today we woke up at the semi-decent hour of eight to visit the mouth of the nearby lake, which happens to be one of the largest sources of freshwater fish in the world. Or so Sean's guidebook said.
We paid for a boat to take us around, and our tuk-tuk driver gave us flimsy fishing poles to bring with us. Any fish we catch, we cook at guesthouse, he said.
The water is shallow for quite a while, dotted with water foliage like clouds. The people there make their living straight from the lake. All the fishermen and their families live right on the water, in raised huts only accessible by boat. The huts vary from sad shaky structures that looked like they'd soon topple in, to sturdier years-weathered structures with multiple stories. Everywhere there were children, jumping off their porches naked into the water, or fishing with bamboo poles. Longtail boats with shuddery motors as well as old canoes floated by in every direction.
For a short while, the boat drivers turned off the engine and let us drift in a deeper part of the lake, which is so large the other edges can't be seen. Peace, halcyon stillness. Then a handful of children rushed up to us in the strangest contraptions, really half-buckets with a single paddle. They sat in these cross-legged. The boat driver explained that they were Vietnamese children. They wanted money, and since they had worked so hard paddling over to us we gave them some change.
Our destination after that was a sort of floating restaurant/souvenir shop/fish farm. There the guys fished with some little Cambodian boys, for fish that were really far too small to reel in. We also enjoyed peering in a crocodile pen, and watching a man scoop tiny shrimp into a pen teeming with two foot-long catfish. That lake was one of the most relaxing places I've ever been. It seems good for the people to live on a constant source of protein, in a place where the children can play and fish and swim, and even attend classes on one of the floating schools back towards the village.
It was hard to leave the lake. Afterwards our driver took us to a land mine museum. I want to get into that, but then I'd have to get into the history of the Khmer Rouge. That's for tomorrow's blog.
Today we woke up at the semi-decent hour of eight to visit the mouth of the nearby lake, which happens to be one of the largest sources of freshwater fish in the world. Or so Sean's guidebook said.
We paid for a boat to take us around, and our tuk-tuk driver gave us flimsy fishing poles to bring with us. Any fish we catch, we cook at guesthouse, he said.
The water is shallow for quite a while, dotted with water foliage like clouds. The people there make their living straight from the lake. All the fishermen and their families live right on the water, in raised huts only accessible by boat. The huts vary from sad shaky structures that looked like they'd soon topple in, to sturdier years-weathered structures with multiple stories. Everywhere there were children, jumping off their porches naked into the water, or fishing with bamboo poles. Longtail boats with shuddery motors as well as old canoes floated by in every direction.
For a short while, the boat drivers turned off the engine and let us drift in a deeper part of the lake, which is so large the other edges can't be seen. Peace, halcyon stillness. Then a handful of children rushed up to us in the strangest contraptions, really half-buckets with a single paddle. They sat in these cross-legged. The boat driver explained that they were Vietnamese children. They wanted money, and since they had worked so hard paddling over to us we gave them some change.
Our destination after that was a sort of floating restaurant/souvenir shop/fish farm. There the guys fished with some little Cambodian boys, for fish that were really far too small to reel in. We also enjoyed peering in a crocodile pen, and watching a man scoop tiny shrimp into a pen teeming with two foot-long catfish. That lake was one of the most relaxing places I've ever been. It seems good for the people to live on a constant source of protein, in a place where the children can play and fish and swim, and even attend classes on one of the floating schools back towards the village.
It was hard to leave the lake. Afterwards our driver took us to a land mine museum. I want to get into that, but then I'd have to get into the history of the Khmer Rouge. That's for tomorrow's blog.
posted by Kirsten Hubbard at 6:06 AM
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