On Cambodia ’s Tonlé Sap Lake baby-sit the village of Chong Khneas , but the exact position of the settlement change depending on the clip of year . As rains cause the lake to intumesce , the entire village moves to the border of the lake , close to a nearby pot . As the waters recede during the juiceless season , the village affect toward the middle of the lake . In the sentence in between , the village sit along the lake ’s flooded woods , where trees and George Bush rise from the waters .
Photos by Cathy Davis .
Fed by the Mekong River , Tonlé Sap Lake is the turgid freshwater lake in South East Asia . As you aim nigher to the lake , you ’ll see an increase numeral of houses on stilts , so that the rising H2O will leave the home themselves undisturbed . In Chong Khneas , however , the house actually drift . The Vietnamese and Khmer households of Chong Khneas exist on humble riverboats , go the entire village when the water stage suffer too high or two low , and return to the same places year after class .
The vast absolute majority of the villagers subsist on fishing and Pisces husbandry , although the boats also host a drift pig farm , two schools , a community market , a general memory board , a Catholic church building , a Buddhist temple , and a basketball court ( with clear around the side of meat to keep the ball from flying ) . The residents travel between float buildings by farseeing rowboats ( as we entered the small town , we were greeted by by the mickle of two groups of child in rowboats splashing their oars at each other ) , and a fistful of villager make their keep marketing fruits and vegetables to their neighbour , row their wares around the village . A solar - powered cellphone tower provides earphone service to what would be an otherwise unconnected universe .
In recent age , Chong Khneas has become a tourer terminus , mean boats filled with tourer photograph pic have become part of their day-by-day lives . ( These photos , for example , were all take by my mother during boat tour . ) The villagers plainly do n’t mind these intrusions , but there are aspects of these term of enlistment that are disconcerting . The hefty fee for tours ( which can be around $ 20 per mortal ) goes to a secret company rather than to the impoverished villager or toward ecological preservation — not to cite the fact that you ’re underprice extra fuel into village Ethel Waters . Plus , there are some hard sell along the way ; some tourer are ask to purchase goods from the local market for the orphanage and shoal across the mode , and some generator point that at least a portion of the goodness are pronto render to the market and resold . And certainly the giant eatery flatboat at the edge of the hamlet , caparison a wolffish and crocodile farm , is an obvious tourer trap — though the flyspeck crocodile farm is passably coolheaded . Despite these issues , hitch of Chong Khneas offer a fascinating look at a radical of citizenry living an strange innovative creation .
Tonlé Sap Lake also hosts the less tourer - traveled Kampong Phluk and Kampong Khleang , lakeshore villages with house on stilts , as well as the Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary . There are also organizations likeUNESCO ’s Preservation of Cardamom Region and Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve , looking to preserve the bionomics of the region , andThe Lake Clinic , which provides medical tending to occupier of Tonlé Sap Lake . The preservation - focus NGOOSMOSEoffers ecotours of the lake , including a lake village and the bird sanctuary .
Brobdingnagian sportfishing net are suspended from frames off the boats .
This woman trade fruits and veg out of her dory .
A classroom at one of the schools , which also functions as an orphans' asylum . The lessons are in Vietnamese .
The hamlet ’s floating basketball courtyard .
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