6 hour bus journey, rather than a 45 min flight, which would have probably taken as long due to distances to airports, having to get there 2 hours early, etc. We also wouldn’t have been able to make these stops along the way :

– market selling local delicacies such as tarantula, crickets, scorpions, etc. Children offering fir you to handle a live tarantula, no thanks!
– stonemason roadside stores, selling from very large statues to small Buddhas and impressive pestel and mortars
– a lady making flattened rice, a favourite snack food, using a Thai Cow engine (originally used to help plough fields), now with various attachments to process rice to the flatten

Checked into our hotel and then off to the local Artisans workshop, where local unemployed people are taught stonemasonery, wood carving, laquerware and silk weaving. Obviously bought the odd item to support the cause.

Next off to Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, to see Chong Kneas floating village, one of 170 villages on the lake with a total population of 80,000. There is a system so that all the community takes turns in taking tourists out on their boats.

The villages are mainly fishermen, they can get everything they need either locally or delivered by boat. Most are immigrants from Vietnam, who have lived in Cambodia for 3-4 generations, who suffered hugely at the time of Pol Pot. They are now unable to get citizenship, so no education and cannot own land, so live on the water.

It stretches for 2500 sq km in dry season (Nov to Apr) where waters are 3-6m deep and 16,000 sq km in the wet season (May to Oct) 35m deep – making it seem like an inland sea. It has a reverse flow, in that in the wet season, water flows into lake from the Tonle Sap River then in the dry season water flows back out in the opposite direction. Due to this the Tonle Sap Lake is very rich in freshwater fish. The villagers move their homes around the lake depending on the season. However, as in lots of places around the world, over fishing is leading to poverty among the villages.

Back to our hotel and a visit to the local supermarket, which was huge and very well stocked, particularly with alcohol, which is very cheap, $7.50 for a bottle of Australian Red Wine.