Siem Reap - Floating Village

Hello!

One of Cambodia's highlights is Siem Reap, a city found in the north west part of the country. For my first weekend I decided to join a few other volunteers to go and visit this amazing place. From Hope school in Takeo (which is where I volunteer) I caught a bus to Phnom Penh. Then we took the Giant Ibis night bus to Siem Reap. The bus was actually really cool, it had double bunk beds which meant you could lie down to sleep (its $15 each way). The journey from Phnom Penh took around 6 hours, I slept for most of the journey so it was fine. We arrived in Siem Reap around 5:30am, I was extremely tiered at this point having only just woken up. A tuk-tuk took us to our hostel, Lud b. If you're ever in Siem Reap, stay in Lub d hostel! It cost us $6 a night, when we arrived they let us shower and had a room to relax in before check in as well as a pool to swim in, a restaurant, bar and travel desk. At 8:30am the travel desked opened, we were able to book a tour to Mechrey Floating Village at 1pm that same day and we also booked a sun rise visit to Angkor Thom with a guide for the next morning.

Before the floating village tour, we went to the old market, I bought some trousers and a book called 'first they killed my father' by Loung Ung. The book is about the authors experience of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge, it’s a hard read but really good to help you understand a bit more about Cambodia history and what happened.

The floating village tour was great, we were picked up at our hostel by a mini bus which took us to Mechrey Village (about a 40min drive away). Our tour guide bought some roasted frogs from a local market for us to eat, I tried one and it was disgusting! So crunchy. Then we got on to a boat and made our way to the village. People started living on the river after the genocide to rebel against the government, living on the river means that they don't have to pay tax. Since then the village has grown to over 400 members, few people leave the village because they are taught the way of life there so stay. Only 2 members left because they could speak English. The village was amazing, everything was floating on the water; schools, chicken farms, shops, houses and a basketball court. We stopped to look at an alligator farm, there were 4 massive crocs laying in the water in this net. I interviewed our tour guide just to fine out a bit more about the way of life in the village for uni. I found that most Cambodians are in the lower classes, around 80% of the population, and the rest are part of the upper class. this is mainly due to the corrupt government, people who work for the government are rich and the rest are poor. Hun Sen is the prime minister of Cambodia and has been since 1998, Cambodia does have elections but from interviewing people of a young Cambodian generation, they seem to suggest that the elections are fixed. Hun Sen has been in government since 1998, and the young people want change, but they know it is hard to get because the election is fixed. They say that the older generation votes for Hun Sen because they don't want what happened in the past to happen again, Hun Sen 'threatens' that the genocide might happen again if he is not in power. So, it’s a tricky one because younger people are wanting and in need of change but the way the government is at the moment makes that impossible.

We stayed at the village for a couple of hours, it was amazing getting a little glimpse and insight into how others live in the world. During dry season, people have to move their houses as the river shrinks in size dramatically. So if you don't like your neighbour you can change them! They had everything you could need to live there including TV satellites.