Riverboat to Siem Reap

Awaking at 6:30 a.m., I groggily shouldered my bags and made my way to the hotel lobby. Waiting for the shuttle to the boat ramp, I and a fellow passenger, a Turkish-German girl who had lived in the States, bought some sweet bread from a local bakery and returned to board the mini-bus. The boat ramp was only right down the road, but this boat is a bit traveler-oriented and they insist on providing full service. Down the ramp we went to the shallow river, which was barely a trickle due to this being the dry season. I and my traveling companion for the day sat near the front away from the engine.

The river boat between Battambang and Siem Reap is supposed to be one of the highlights of any visit to Cambodia, though most people opt for the bus between the two places, which takes about 3 hours as opposed to the 6-12 hours that the boat takes (the journey is much longer in the dry season). I chose the boat however, excited for the prospect of gaining a different perspective of this place and for the journey through a protected wetland. The vessel is a long wooden thing that seems to be sort of thrown together. This particular one was painted in all blue and had an awning over the top of it.


Shortly after sunrise, we were underway. We passed riverside villages where the houses were all on stilts. The villagers, dressed in a sarong, were out bathing in the silty brown river. We also encountered other boat travelers, in canoe-like vessels with small two-stroke engines attached haphazardly to the stern. Children waved at us from the villages and passing boats with vigor and we happily returned their greetings.


We moved into a more desolate stretch of the river, which began to narrow and lose depth. The driver would floor the accelerator around the bends, trying to avoid beaching the boat, which usually happened anyways. As we became stuck on sandbars, the two young boys at the bow would attempt to push off with a giant bamboo pole, an imperfect method.


About two hours into the journey, the engine stalled and failed to reignite. We came to rest against the river bank as the driver became the mechanic and set about repairing the motor. As he spent about two hours in the engine compartment, we the passengers sat calmly reading and napping about the boat. There seemed to be little concern about whether we would ever get moving again, as the morning heat was moderate and the scenery pleasant.


Eventually we did get moving with mild fanfare, and the routine of beaching the boat resumed for a few hours until finally the river widened and we entered a marshy sort of area. This is where things got quite interesting. We began passing real live floating villages on either side of the river. The houses were made of a combination of reeds, wood, and large leaves, and they were floating on bundles of bamboo. This is pretty useful when the water level rises 9 meter in the wet season.


Life here is totally water-based. There are no roads, so all transport is by boat (we had some locals aboard our boat and as we would come up to their village, we would send out a whistle and there family members would paddle a canoe out to pick them up). They fish with giant contraptions that look like cranes, made out of bamboo, rope and netting. Food comes from the water, in the form of fish and plants that are grown in floating gardens. They even had some floating pig pens. Once they have digested the food, it also goes back into the water, though I think the marshlands help filter out the bad stuff (at least I hope).


There is also an interesting clash of primitive and modern. I never knew you could have electricity in a floating house, but indeed you can. There were even some TVs and satellite dishes. As for sleeping, hammocks seem to be the way to go.

On and on we motored by village after floating village, eventually coming into the open waters of the Tonle Sap, SE Asia's largest lake, late in the evening. This lake rises about 10 meters in depth every year in the wet season, as the Mekong river backs up into it, thus the floating villages and stilted houses. We watched the sun set, reflecting upon the large body of water, and motored on into another narrow waterway towards Siem Reap.


Just as it became totally dark, we reached the boat ramp, and I and two fellow passenger boarded a tuktuk to ferry us the 30 km into the small city of Siem Reap, base for Angkor Wat and the surrounding ruins. We traveled the dusty roads through what in the wet season would be a lake bed. Back into the bustle of a large settlement, we came to appreciate the 11 hour journey we had just completed through a place that was so different from what we in the West are used to.

After a minor dispute with the tuktuk driver who tried to pawn us off into a commission-paying hotel in a distant region of town, we checked into Popular Guesthouse, which as its name implies, is popular. So here I sit, now four days later, having become a bit stuck in this spot.

And that's the floating village post!