{"id":456,"date":"2011-07-02T07:55:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-02T14:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/?p=456"},"modified":"2013-01-19T15:08:24","modified_gmt":"2013-01-19T22:08:24","slug":"simply-amazing-the-conclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/?p=456","title":{"rendered":"Simply amazing – the conclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our last day in Cambodia finds us with another relatively early start (for people on vacation) as we have a few things left on our list to see and need to get back to the airport by 2pm for our flight back to Thailand.<\/p>\n

As usual our guide Theoun is already waiting for us when we come out of the breakfast area, and after loading what seems like more baggage than we arrived with, it is off to our last set of temples. \u00c2\u00a0Today we will go to a group of 3 temples in the Roluos group<\/a> – Lolei<\/a>, Bakong<\/a>, and Preah Ko<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0These temples were built about 50km south-east of the main Angkor complex and are much closer to the Tonle Sap (more on that later). \u00c2\u00a0At some point the king realized that the area was prone to flooding and the king relocated the capital to the Angkor area and started building his new temples there. \u00c2\u00a0The main Angkor complex is a tough act to follow and these temples are not nearly as big and impressive as what we have already seen (sort of like looking at the original smaller pyramids after seeing The Great Pyramid first) but given that they were built in the 800s it is still a little inspiring to see what people made by hand over 1200 years ago – some of them like Bakong are still in quite good shape, and it is hard to image that they have lasted that long.<\/p>\n

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As an aside, after seeing all of these temples I have decided that I would quite fancy having a moat – I have requested to the gardener to get started on one as soon as we get home, so that I can have some crocodiles delivered before the rainy season begins back home \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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The final items on our list for Cambodia before heading back to the airport is to visit the\u00c2\u00a0Tonl\u00c3\u00a9 Sap<\/a> and one of the floating villages. \u00c2\u00a0The\u00c2\u00a0Tonl\u00c3\u00a9 Sap\u00c2\u00a0is a lake that most of the year is long and narrow (a few km wide and about 100km long), but fairly shallow (around 1 meter) and flows into the Mekong River and into the Pacific Ocean. \u00c2\u00a0During the rainy season though the Mekong actually has such a high water volume that it over flows backwards into the\u00c2\u00a0Tonl\u00c3\u00a9 Sap and the lake expands dramatically to about 35km wide and almost 150km long and it’s depth increases by about 10x to around 10 meters. \u00c2\u00a0The lake floods out the fairly flat country side and at it’s peak covers around 16,000 square km (around 6100 square miles)!! \u00c2\u00a0The flooding creates a unique farming environment and they can harvest 3 crops per year from the well fertilized soil. Additionally, the flooded area provides a great spawning area for fish, and during the high season tons of fish are caught as one of the area’s major food sources.<\/p>\n

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A unique side effect of the expansion and shrinking of the lake is the existence of the ‘floating villages’ around the lake area. \u00c2\u00a0Technically they are not floating, but are actually all built on high stilts over 20 feet off the ground. \u00c2\u00a0Most of the year the ground below is dry and the houses and buildings are just raised up off the ground. \u00c2\u00a0There is a ‘main street’ and people walking about, gardens growing, etc. but when the lake floods the entire village is suspended above the water by the stilts and the only means of moving about is by boat. \u00c2\u00a0All the items that are on the ground are either moved up into the house, or are moved out by the road before the waters get too high. \u00c2\u00a0At the time of our visit the village is not yet flooded, but our guide informs us that the water is rising at a rate of about 5cm per day (about 2 inches)!<\/p>\n

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We drive in from the main road about 1\/2 way to the village where we board a longtail boat to go out to where the village is and then out onto the lake itself. \u00c2\u00a0The lake was impressive and has already flooded enough that we cannot see the other side, and as we are going down the river from where we started we can see areas where the forest floor is now covered in water. \u00c2\u00a0On the way back in from the lake our boat stops at the main pagoda for the village and we are able to get out and walk around. \u00c2\u00a0It is a bit of a surreal experience to walk down the street and have to look up at all the buildings, but aside from that it is mostly a regular village, there are homes, merchants, and we even spot a barber chair at one building. \u00c2\u00a0Near and dear to Mrs Columbus’ heart is a walk by the local primary school where dozens of young children are laughing and playing – it seems that we have wandered by during recess and the children are just hanging about in their classrooms. \u00c2\u00a0Our guide tells us that it is OK to go have a look inside and even takes us into a couple of the rooms. \u00c2\u00a0The little Cambodian faces are all smiles and the kids are waving at us, just excited to see some foreign faces. \u00c2\u00a0The experience is a little moving, and we stop to buy some notebooks for the teacher to distribute to the kids in one of the classrooms before we head back to our boat to go home.<\/p>\n

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A quick trip back to Siem Reap for lunch and then our driver takes us back to the airport to checkin for our flight back to Thailand and the next part of our journey. \u00c2\u00a0I definitely think that there is much more to see in Cambodia and I hope to be able to come back in the near future to explore some other parts of the country as we have barely even scratched the surface. \u00c2\u00a0The people we interacted with were incredible and we are continually reminded of how happy people can be with so little that we are leaving a little humbled inside.<\/p>\n

Our return flight is uneventful, and we are greeted in Bangkok by a taxi driver that we have used before. \u00c2\u00a0We were able to call him from Cambodia and arrange for him to take us to Kanchanaburi which is our next destination. \u00c2\u00a0The trip is about 3 hours, but we hit the Bangkok traffic at the end of the work day so that adds another hour to our drive time, by the time we get to our hotel we are all ready for a quick bite to eat and then some quality sleep time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our last day in Cambodia finds us with another relatively early start (for people on vacation) as we have a few things left on our list to see and need to get back to the airport by 2pm for our flight back to Thailand. As usual our guide Theoun is already waiting for us when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,24,27],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer-2011","tag-angkor-wat","tag-cambodia","tag-tonle-sap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":478,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}