Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake is home to in fact a lot of floating villages. For some the idea of living on a boat may seem strange, but it is not that much different than living on a boathouse in a USA marina, or river in Venice. Except that maybe here you lie on your hammock in bed, fishing for your next meal, and when the fish bites, you just flick it out of the water directly into your frying pan. Then take your cano over to the floating market or floating bar to chat with friends. Getting back home after a night drinking may be a small problem though.

Like many other places in Cambodia, and the world for that matter, if there is a dollar to be made, the government takes over control. Thus, the tourist police have taken over control of the compony that runs the boat tours on the river. Thus, the fee went up to $30 a person, and the government takes most of the share. The actual boat captain that takes you out, sees about nothing of that, and less even the actual people living on the lake.

You start by take a $10 taxi ride from Siem Reap to the docks, and after parting with your $30 for a ticket, go through 3 checkpoints before you actually make it on the boat. From there it is about 6 miles of river riding with floating houses all along the banks.

Local drug boat ha ha ha

But since the police is not going to chase you, you can just tow your weed.

The local restaurant and market on the water is impressive, for a boat.

They have a crocodile farm inside the market, where they breed crocodiles until about 3 or 4 years old, then kill them off. The skin goes to making handbags and so on, while i have no idea who gets the meat.

If Ragime and Carl lived here, this would be them on their sooped up boat.

And, of course for $30 i am going to drive.

And like the roads in Cambodia, other drivers just wants to pass where there is no space. I was passing a standing boat with two oncoming boats when from behind some twat in a larger tour boat tried to squeeze between me and the oncoming boat. A massive wave from a double decker tour boat that just passed got caught between my boat and them. The wave got forced up from my bow, and just soaked all the guests on the other boat. Of course the Cambodians being humble people did not know what to do, while i rolled with laughter. The other guests on their boat were not happy with their driver being in such a hurry just to pick up another boatload of tourists.

Kitchens on the boats are by fire, so collecting firewood involves taking out your small skif and searching the nearby land for dead trees.