Siem Reap and Back

Location, location, location... River frontage---extensive water views!
Exactly where you don't want your house to be when the monsoon hits.

Following the Very Busy Weekend, we had a tiring but very enjoyable two days. Anna and I accompanied Loy on a flying (or should I say, wading) visit to her home and family, 350km away in Siem Reap province. With twelve hours out of our two days spent sitting on a bus, we had plenty of time to soak in the views, which were remarkably watery this time round, with every river twice it's normal width, every ditch filled with water (algal or otherwise), most fields well into submarine territory, and many houses standing in water (anywhere from ankle-deep to eaves-level-deep). Probably two-thirds of the journey was through land inundated by the over-full Tonle Sap Lake.

Algae in the water, and as a consequence, itchy
skin for everyone who has to wade through it.

Understandably, living with annual inundation has its downsides. While building main roads anything up to a couple of metres above the level of the floodplain does help to keep them serviceable during flooding, it does pose a certain a degree of danger to anyone who happens to run off the road (or is driven off the road by a bus barging through, its horn being the audio equivalent of a jammed CAPS LOCK key). And although the Khmer people invariably build their houses atop tall concrete pillars, safely clear of all but the worst monsoon floods, their livestock (especially the water buffalo) struggle to make it up the stairs (as do foreigners not blessed with the agility of a mountain goat). Farmer e®bAn (Brown) has no option but to shift his cattle, his pigs, and possibly his ducks, to higher ground, which in a country as pancake flat as Cambodia, means the main road. Livestock need to be fed, so the out come the haystacks and feeding troughs too. Of course, Farmer cUns (Jones) next door follows suit, and so on, and so on, down the highway from district to district. The steep embankments either side of the road make it relatively difficult for the cattle to reside anywhere other than the shoulder of the road (or more likely, on the roadway itself), so that is where they go. This spectacle presents a blindingly obvious once-in-a-monsoon opportunity for any would-be cattle-rustler, so Farmers Brown, Jones, and all their neighbours erect huts and shelters from sticks and tarps along the shoulder of the road, so that they can camp out and defend their stock. The end result, of course, is a national highway network that bears more striking resemblance to agricultural show than transport infrastructure.

This then leaves just one remaining challenge to be tackled: how to get with ease between one's house (high and dry) and the nearest road (high and covered with animals), via one's front yard/pond (low and wet). The answer is, naturally, to build a bridge. I leave it to you to judge the results for beauty, safety and usability.

Loy's house

We finally arrived at Loy's house to be met by her delightfully welcoming parents. Anna suffered a short bout of trepidation when faced with getting from road to house via the flooded front yard, but soon discovered that walking through muddy water was actually easier than keeping one's balance on the floating logs that formed the first step up to the house. Loy's father immediately showed us around the property (or at least the more accessible parts of it) and introduced us to the family's livestock: piglets, chickens, ducks, puppies, and the little fish swimming around our feet, together with the occasional bullfrog.

Next, back to the kitchen, where we got to know Loy's mother, learnt about the production processes of homemade prahoc (fermented fish puree), and discovered the genetic origin of Loy's XXL-sized grin (evidenced in family photo below), matched only by the emoticon :D. While dinner was cooking, we were able to try our hand at a spot of fishing (out the kitchen door and under the house being the most lucrative locations), and two fish hardly large enough to be out of nappies were unlucky enough to munch on the tiny hook I'd camouflaged within a single grain of rice---I expect by now they'll be adding their bit two-cents'-worth of aroma to the prahoc out the back of the kitchen.

My prize catch!

In the evening, we went out 'for a walk' that ended up being by moto (the Khmer phrase that translates as 'go for a walk' doesn't seem to stress the mode of locomotion, only the fact that one is going for fun). Half a km along the road there is a bridge over a small river, at which Loy's cousin showed us the spot where a young child died recently when a boat got caught up in an overhanging tree and capsized---the father was able to carry two children to shore but didn't have a third arm for the last one. Two other pre-school children in the area have drowned in the past few weeks. The loss of so many young children (well over 100 across Cambodia) has to be the most heart-rending outcome from the recent flooding.

Anna playing hopscotch with the crabs
on the way back from the outhouse

Come Tuesday morning we had the opportunity to explore the rice paddies behind Loy's house by boat, and thence to the nearest village (also accessible by boat at present). Rice doesn't mind wet feet, but waist-deep water is another matter, and Loy says that while the rice won't die, it's yield will reduced to perhaps 10% of normal---not good for the farmers, or for anyone here for that matter, given what it will inevitably do to the price of rice in the coming year.

After our brief stay, we got on the bus back to Phnom Penh, and subjected ourselves to 6 hours of punishment from the driver, who obviously considered utmost haste to be imperative---a priority most definitely not to be sacrificed for mere trifles like safety or comfort of ride, or the presence of pedestrians, cyclist, and motorcyclists on the road, whose only option is to flee its path. Nevertheless, we arrived safely back at the BEC, tired, but ready for the next day's adventures.