Siem Reap, Cambodia: Floating Village

Fishermen hitting the net to sift out the remaining tiny fish, stuck in the net.

The animist spirit house.

December 26, 2010

It was good to see our guide, Ken Ha ("Nya"), again after I last saw him a few weeks ago at my Angkor Wat half marathon in Siem Reap. He toured us through the Siem Reap floating village on a boat. Right now, the village is barely visited, where we toured, but it's getting overtouristed in parts and we predict this area will too. But, for now, it seemed nearly untouched and we got a taste of life as a floating villager. Click video here to get a taste of the floating village.

They are nomad fishermen, changing location depending on the monsoon season. The lake is huge but still quadruples in size whenever the monsoon rains hit, and the villagers float all over depending on where the fishing is best. They mostly use nets and you can see the picture above and click the video here to see them use large hoop tools to swat at the nets to break the smallest remaining fish free of the net.

They have an animist spirit house (see photo above) where they climb up to the top to heal people, calling the spirits of the river, fish, and other parts of nature. They still practice Buddhism at the same time. A small minority practice Christianity, but I'd say that's a super small minority, as Christian missionaries have had a slow go at these non-English speaking rural villagers. They seem very busy, even branching out to farm some rice in some of the wet but shallow rice paddies. We saw some floating villager children finally get a break from being trapped on their boats, wandering the soggy rice paddies with their older but still young siblings keeping an eye on them as their parents worked the fish and rice fields.