Tuesday 12 January 2010

Ton Le Sap floating village...complete with catfish, crocs and pythons?!

After our lovely lay in yesterday, today (Wednesday) was back to the early start again; the alarm was on for 6:15am so we had an early breakfast and met Pim at 7ish.

A dust filled half hour journey took us to the shores of Ton Le Sap lake, where we were directed down a ramp, bought a ticket and jumped onto a rather old and rickety boat.  We had our own boat (minus any life jackets - good job we are both swimmers) a driver, and guide.  We were heading out to the corner of the lake that held the floating village of Ton Le Sap, a 3500 strong community of people (mainly Vientnamese and Cambodian) who live their entire lives on the water.


We saw floating houses, supermarkets, schools, catholic churches...even herb gardens!  It truly was a sight to behold; after travelling for 20 minutes we stopped at a cafe that had its own fish farm complete with cat fish and crocodiles.  Inside we were offered the opportunity to hold their python, well you can imagine Nicola's reaction...but Ben on the other hand...jumped straight in!

Snake handling complete we headed up stairs to take in a panaramic view from the roof, before getting back on our boat to travel back down to the dock where we disembarked and met Pim for the journey back to town.

The original plan then was to go up in the balloon that overshadows Angkor Wat, however the wind was too strong so we could not go up (we don't seem to have much luck when it comes to balloon flights!!).  We are heading back this afternoon to see if the winds have died down enough to go up.  On the way back to our hotel we saw probably the most weird motor bike scenario yet (personally we didn't think anything could beat the pigs yesterday)...a calf!



Tomorrow we fly to Vietnam, after a lovely stay in Cambodia!

1 comment:

  1. just posted a comment but not sure whether it went! Hope this one does. The info is great - keep it coming !!

    Mum and dad

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