Day 14- Kabe's day on the Tonle Sap

My day started at 12am in the morning when my roommate Gareth was ill and I stayed up with him until he fell asleep. By the morning, thankfully, he was feeling much better and I had breakfast with Dan, Jake and Mr Malone. 

Shortly after we headed off to Tonle Sap (the largest lake in Asia, that swells to four times its normal size in the wet season), the trip took around 45minutes. On the way we observed local villagers making traditional “sticky rice” which many of us got a chance to taste. It is cooked for over an hour with coconut milk inside the core of a bamboo stem.  We continued until we arrived at another village on the edge of the lake. In this settlement all the buildings were built high off the ground on large stilts, as during the wet season the lake swells and the road disappears, leaving the houses completely surrounded by water. Once in the village we boarded a boat that took us on a tour down the river to the Tonle Sap, this lake was so large that you could see the earth’s curve when looking straight across it. On the lake we also observed a “floating village” where people lived in houses floating on the lake. These people made their existence by fishing the waters of the lake.

After the interesting tour we headed back on the bus to the hotel where me and a few friends went for lunch at a nearby restaurant, “kids plaza” restaurant which had amazingly good rice.

After lunch we visited to a local swimming lake and had a look at it, it was once made by hand labour and it stretched for km’s down it was truly amazing to think the amount of work that would have been needed to excavate the massive body of water.

Afterwards me and a few friends went out to a Thai restaurant for dinner and then had free time for the rest of the night.

Kabe Orr