A Day on the Tonle Sap River

10th April 2013

We spent the night at the wharf in Phnom Penh and few people, if any , took up the opportunity to back ashore after dinner to have a further look around. Most of us were just relaxing after a busy day.

We depart from Phnom Penh at 6 am, to move further up a tributary of the Mekong, the Tonle Sap river, to the town of Koh Chen. This is on the way to the lake where Siem Reap is located, but it is currently the dry season and there is insufficient water in the lake for us to enter. So after our visit up the Tonle Sap, we will have to retrace our steps back to the main river, to move further upstream, and ultimately get a bus to Siem Reap.

Whilst departing from Phnom Penh, we managed to run over a local fishermans net, and had a brief break to clear it from the propeller, and pay the fisherman US$25 as compensation

Arrival at Koh Chen (Kampong Luong) was very interesting. A thin rickety jetty had been built out from the shallow shore, and our captain managed to miraculously edge our large vessel in next to this jetty without destroying it. A truly impressive piece of seamanship. We arrived there at around 8.30am.

              
                                                                        Welcoming party

We precariously connected to the rickety jetty

Koh Chen is 40 km north of Phnom Penh, and the entire community is involved in making various items from silver (and as we discovered, also copper and brass which is given a quick dip in silver nitrate for a thin coat of silver).

It is a very friendly village and all of the families are silversmiths. After the Khmer Rouge rule, there were only a few families of silversmiths left in Cambodia, and this village is now the centre of this craft. Everything is hand made and quite intricate.

                          The pieces are all hand beaten and patterned with a series of punches

this large piece has been commissioned by a buyer from Australia

Repairing a broken thong, but not dropping the merchandise

Local chickens eating a mango

After visiting various families that specialized in different items, and buying a few trinkets, we all headed back to the ship. It was warm again on shore, but nowhere near as hot as yesterday. We were back on board by 9.45 am, and immediately weighed anchor to head further upstream to Kampung Chhnang. By now the river is getting narrow, and filled with water hyacinth. There would be little chance of a vessel of our size passing us, so the skipper gave a warning blast as he approached a few tight bends. 

The river is narrow and filled with water hyacinth

In the meantime, we take in the river life, there is always something going on either on the water or on the shore.

Kids playing in the water

                                           Getting ready for a family outing ?

It is quite a long trip to Kampong Chhnang, and we arrive at 3pm, drop our anchor, and are quickly greeted by 2 sampans to take us for a tour through the floating village and then ashore. The floating village is very large and is mainly Vietnamese people, who fled south Vietnam during the war, hoping that once they were in Cambodia, they could apply for refugee status and go to the USA. Of course when they got there, they found another Communist Government who was never going to let them go to the USA, so they are still there. They are mainly fisherman, operating fish farms similar to those we saw in Vietnam.

Once ashore we are shuffled into mini buses for a 20 minute trip to Andaung Russey village. The trip through the main town , through the market area, and eventually out into the country.

Monks crossing the harvested rice paddies just outside the village

We find a cashew tree which still has some fruit left on it

 Once at the village, we walk through to an area where palm juice is collected and made into palm sugar (and wine, or rocket fuel). A gentleman 61 years old is the local expert and briskly climbs the sugar palms about 23 times a day to collect the flowers from which they extract juice, which is then treated and boiled down to concentrate it into palm sugar (widely used in Asian cooking). 

Male and female flowers from the sugar palm, from which the juice is extracted

If allowed to mature, the fruit is bright orange and fibrous inside and smells a bit like mango

Sugar palms look like this and can live for up to 1000 years

We get a full demonstration of him climbing a tree and going from tree to tree about 50 foot off the ground before returning with some juice in bamboo containers.  We also had the pleasure of tasting the “wine” he makes (distills) from the fermented juice. It is about 40% alcohol, and you could run your car on it. Our German visitors are impressed and buy a few bottles.

                                                      The Germans like the wine

Off to collect some juice

There he goes, up the palm tree

The children enjoy the entertainment

After a very informative presentation on the virtues of sugar palms, we head off to see a local pottery, where the pots are all hand made without a potters wheel, and fired in an open fire once enough pieces are ready to fire.

She started with a solid piece of clay and no pottery wheel, first forming a hollow cylinder

                                            The pot is shaped by walking around it

The last step is to close off the bottom of the pot

Next is a mini factory producing charcoal stoves, using a design developed by an International Aid Group, dedicated to reducing the destruction of forests for firewood and offering a practical energy efficient solution for the locals.  It is an upgrade of the old charcoal cooker which is common throughout Asia, with addition of an outer metal casing which incorporates insulation between the casing and the cooker, using ash from burning rice husks as insulation.

                                 The core of the stove is moulded and fired

                                                         The finished product

Our guide explaining  the process (the pile of material is the rice husk ash insulation)

It has been an interesting afternoon and well worth the trip up here. We now catch the sampans back to the ship, so she can get under way to head back to the main river and we will again anchor not far from Phnom Penh for the night.

Joy had decided to give the excursion a miss and stay on the ship to rest. This photo captured her 'resting" with a fellow passenger at the stern of the ship as we approached in our sampan