The Floating Village of Kompong Phluk

So the floating village of Kompong Phluk was definitely built on water and the lives of the people that lived there relied heavily on the water for their livelihood - but the village was technically not floating.  All the houses were built on stilts, high enough to accommodate the tide, the change from wet to dry season, and moderate storms.  Only a few sheds or small buildings were REALLY floating.  So with the disclaimer out of the way, here are the details.

So the tuk-tuk ride out of Siem Reap took about 40 minutes and was mostly down the paved main road.  After about 30 minutes we turned off the main road and passed through a little village with a slow moving stream.  The whole scene was rather peaceful.

Our chariot for the day (not the bus)

Some people have trouble carrying one mattress with a van...

Our driver then stopped at the first 'checkpoint' that required us to pay $25 total to enter 'the park' where the village was.   Looking back this charge is better described as a boat fee but given that we'd already spent about $40 to have the tuk-tuk driver escort us here, we still felt gauged.  After we got our tickets and had a quick bathroom break, we drove down possibly the worst road we have EVER encountered.  It probably would have only taken 3 minutes in a car, but took almost 20 in the tuk-tuk as the potholes were so big and wide that you felt nauseous riding over them.  Seriously, it probably would have been easier to get out and walk instead.  At the end of the worst road ever, we were passed on to our boat driver.  There were tons of boats and tons of drivers waiting for the tourists, and for some reason there was only one group per boat.  So this means that Christina and I had a boat equipped to carry over 20 but instead it carried only us.  We actually saw another boat of the same size carrying around only one foreigner.  Seems terribly inefficient to me but I guess this is a better way to spread out the money coming into 'the park'.

This road was definitely not flat.

The long line of boats waiting to shuttle visitors to the floating village.

Heading down the river it probably took about 30 minutes to reach the village.  Looking out over sectioned off pieces of the delta that would be used for cultivating fish and other water based livestock.  On the right side we could also see sporadic evidence of a road that once served the village.  Parts of a flat well-travelled road every now and then, mixed in with some old concrete bridges that were better labeled as islands.

The left or right view from the boat on the way to the village

Remainder of the old road.

The village itself was very well put together and in a way almost makes you wish you could stay there for longer, just to experience what living this way is actually like.  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

After we made it through the actual village, we were offloaded onto a floating restaurant that also doubled as a dock for our second, and much smaller boat ride.  10-20 boats with 2 women each (no men) in shallow paddle boats waited for us to climb on so they could slowly paddle us through the mangrove forest. A bit of a scam, really, as they don't tell you that this is coming and they expect you to pay an additional $8 for the boat.  We, of course, did it as the scenery was gorgeous and never have we ever seen mangrove trees that close up before.  The lady at the front of the boat had her very young baby along for the ride as well.  It was very peaceful and calming as we could not here any of the motor boats and there was no other sources of man made noise.  And despite the number of boats waiting to paddle tourists through the mangroves we only ran into about 2 other boats on our 30ish minute cruise.  At one point the lady at the back of the boat even picked a bouquet of flowers for Christina.  Despite feeling forced to take the mangrove cruise and knowing that they are trying to take every last dollar they can from you, Cambodia really seemed to make you feel as good as possible while doing so :)

There was also this large incomplete man-made walkway that stretched from the little piece of land the village was resting one foot on, out to a large platform on the edge off the large lake.  For you geographical types, we were touring the village and mangroves on the north side of the lake that is at the centre of Cambodia.  With the wet and dry seasons so extreme there did not appear to be any fresh water beaches despite the many pockets of water in Southeast Asia.  The freshwater shores all seemed to be covered by forest or farmland (rice paddies, fish farms).

The little boat through the mangroves docked us at a different floating restaurant than where we started.  Despite the waving of a menu and the offering of a table, Christina and I decided to get back on our 20 person boat for 2 and get back to the mainland.

There was supposed to be a bit more involved with today's adventure but to get to the other temples we had to buy another pass for Angkor ($20 a head I think), no one told us that we had to get this pass up front, nor did they tell us that we should buy the 2 day pass the day before.   A little more research on our end would have probably worked out well here too.  So we missed out on some temples (tragic as it sounds) and headed back into town to enjoy the markets and pub street.