The Road to ISMRM Singapore 2016: Cambodia Part 2
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This is part two of a two part series describing my trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia, which is one of the excursions that you could potentially take while visiting the ISMRM annual meeting in Singapore in 2016. Part one, which contains a lot of background material, can be found here. This one will be a lot shorter!
Our plan for the second full day of our visit was to visit the floating village of Chong Kneas. I honestly hadn’t done much reading or preparing for this visit, since I was focused on the temples, so I went into this day expecting a nice outing, but not much more. What we saw though was simply unbelievable.
School was out that day, and we saw many kids in transit or out walking while driving to the port that would take us to the floating village. This kind of scene was common there. We often saw kids who appeared to be as young as 10 or so driving low power mopeds around with family.
The village of Chang Kneas actually has two parts: a group of houses on stilts on land above the floodplain of the lake and a series of structures that make up the actual floating part of village further out on the lake itself. The on-land portion of the village is where the farmers of the community live along with older members of the community who may not fare as well on the floating village itself. The lake nearly triples in size during the rainy season, and with it comes very fertile soil on the floodplain. This allows the farmers here to grow up 2–3 rice crops per year with yields of 3 or more tons per hectare, which is double the yield just a few kilometers away.
The floating part of the village is only accessible through a boat ride down a narrow channel that leaves from this inland port. The port is currently in the process of being renovated. There has clearly been investment in this area, and our tour guide, Beuk, has heard that they may even be building a hotel on the far side of the photo below. After returning home, I read that this is the most touristy of the three floating villages, but Beuk said that the other two weren’t out on the lake at this time because of the low lake level. Over the next 2–3 months, the lake will rise almost 8 meters, which will enable all of the villages to return to the lake.
The trip took us past many docked boats of all different shapes and sizes, as well as an area where new floating structures were being built.
The boats were driven by old Toyota motors and transmissions that had clearly come directly out of cars. Instead of running to a radiator, the cooling lines simply ran lake water directly through the engine. The steering mechanism was pretty simple: a car steering shaft wrapped with nylon rope that went to the back of the boat in PVC pipe. Simple to build, simple to repair.
After about 20 mins, we saw the first larger floating building, which was the town store, with backup wood and thatching for roofs. But the true amazement came as we rounded this building. The entire lake opened up and all one could see was floating houses and buildings for as far as the eye could see.
Somewhere between 3000 to 6000 people live in this village year round. Many only go on land 2–3 times a year. They survive by fishing and by hosting tourists. After returning home and reading more, it’s clear that these villages are starting to have a significant environmental impact on the lake, which is clearly having a negative impact on the health of the people of the village. It’s not clear how long this will be sustainable (likely not long), but for now, it’s something that I could never have imagined would work on this scale.
The weather that day was cloudy and cooler than the first days. The solid gray color of the sky reflected off of the lake so that you really only saw the dark strip of buildings and boats against a continuous solid gray background. The one exception was the two mobile phone towers on the edges of the lake. Modern phone technology is everywhere…
There are even churches and schools out on the water.
We stopped at a tourist shop in the middle of the village that had a floating crocodile farm on it. At one point two kids, who couldn’t have been more than 12, jumped in wash basins and paddled 50 meters or so over to the next building as if it was nothing. Beuk said that since they are born on the floating village, everyone knows how to swim from the time when they’re infants, and that that scene happens all the time. Even the dogs out there knew to “do their business” near the edge of the barge so that it could be easily dealt with.
Our boat had a great first mate who did his best to take care of us to and from the floating village.
After returning to the port, we came back to our hotel to rest and have dinner for our last night in Cambodia before departing back to Singapore early the next day.
I left this last day with the same complex thoughts and emotions from the first day. What we saw was a coordinated community that manages to survive year round on large flat boats made of rough wood and metal, without running water to electricity, or much of anything really. As I said above, I can’t imagine that these villages will be able to survive on the lake forever. The environmental impact will eventually force them to move. On the other hand, the fact that these people have come together to construct this huge, beautiful infrastructure on a lake is truly amazing. I still can’t believe the scale and organization of the place. And without really anything other than farming and fishing, they’re clearly hoping that this is a place where tourists can come and spend some time and money. I can definitely say that we left some money in the village, and I honestly look forward to the next time that I can come back and visit and see how this place progresses. It certainly isn’t like anything that I’ve ever seen before!
Please check the ISMRM homepage for continued updates on the annual meeting, including updates to this series. I hope you enjoyed seeing our trip to Cambodia. This text and these photos can’t even come close to fully describing the full breadth of the experience we had. I hope that it’s something that you will consider as part of your trip to Southeast Asia. It’s an amazing country and I personally can’t wait for my next chance to come back.
— Mark
