Prek Toal - Cambodia (4)

Up the Sangkae River, we stopped at a floating shop house and this girl became my unpremeditated model for a few photos! Here is the first shot when she came paddling back home.

Prek Toal - Cambodia (3)

End of day at the secondary school. Most kids return home by paddle boats. Some, living too far, are having their canoes pulled in lines by small motorboats.

Prek Toal - Cambodia (2)

There are two schools in the village of Prek Toal, both are floating buildings. Here is a group of school girls paddling to their lessons.

Prek Toal - Cambodia (1)

Larger and wealthier families might possess a few rafts attached together. On the main one would be the living, dining and sleeping area. Floating beside this main structure, would be a raft kitchen, a semi-floating live fish enclosure with live chicken in cages located on top of the enclosure (droppings feed the fishes…), possibly a raft garden and a semi-submerged raft serving as a crocodile cage.

The Floating Village of Prek Toal - Cambodia

Located along the Sangkae River, the village of Prek Toal is comprised mostly of floating houses, with a few community facilities such as the temple, telecom towers and the head quarter of the Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary, that are anchored on sand banks.

Excursion on the Tonle Sap Lake - Cambodia

The next leg of this journey to Cambodia brought us on the Tonlé Sap Lake where we visited the floating village of Prek Toal with an overnight home stay on a raft house and followed with an excursion to the the Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary.

The Tonlé Sap Lake is the centre piece of a very particular ecosystem, as it retains water from the Mekong River during the monsoon season and releases it back to the Mekong during the dry season. In the process, the lake swells its footprint to 5 times its normal size. As the level of the water varies by about 9 meters, communities living by the lake have chosen to build their houses either on 10 meters bamboo stilts or as rafts floating on the lake. The yearly flooding creates an environment that brings nutrients to the water and promotes fish life.

Cambodians depend on fish for approximately 70 percents of their protein. So intertwined are the Cambodians and their fish that the country's currency, the riel, is named after the small silver carp that is the staple of many diets here.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you!