Two days ago, as the plane from Phnom
Penh, Cambodia, prepared to land at Siem Reap, I saw great expanses of marshland
below. When I landed, I told my guide Sopheak that I wanted to spend
one less day temple hopping and do some birding.
Today, we left the hotel at 6 AM and
drove to a canal that leads to Tonle Sap Great Lake, the largest body
of water in Southeast Asia. The lake increases its area from 2,700 sq
km to 15,000 in the wet season compared to the dry season. Some of
the lake is open water, but much plays host to trees, bushes and
floating rafts of vegetation. The water rises 9 meters in the rainy
season and submerges all shrubs and large trees other than the crowns
of the tallest. The leaves underwater drop off and regrow as the
water recedes. The lake was below half way down the day I visited.
After a pleasant two hour ride in a
narrow, flat-bottomed, covered boat, we came to the floating village
of Pret Toal, population 5,000. It has floating houses, stores,
chicken coops, and a gas station. This village has a fixed school on
stilts (others have floating schools) and kids row to school.
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| Pret Toal |
The floating structure are built on
bamboo rafts made buoyant by plastic or metal drums. If you want to
move—maybe you don't like the neighbors--you tow your house by
boat.
The villagers live off fishing. The
lake teems with fish, judging by the many I saw leaping. Most
electricity is from car batteries. To recharge one, villagers leave
it out front. A guy in a boat picks it up, charges it from a
generator, and delivers it for a small fee. Despite the remote area
and primitive conditions, the marsh has communication towers. You can
get better cell coverage here than in the rural counties west of
Ottawa, Canada (where I live).
At Pret Toal, we switched to a smaller
boat skippered by a local ranger, and headed into the wildlife
preserve.
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| The boat on the right is the canal boat and the left one is the marsh boat we used. |
The ranger guided us through a watery forest maze to a
viewing platform built into a tree. After an hour in the treetop, we
boated back to Pret Toal for lunch (grilled fish, fish and cabbage
soup, fish and bean salad) at a floating restaurant. I was amazed
that our ranger could find his way through the twisting and narrow
bits of water.
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| View from the front of the marsh boat. |
The area abounds in large water birds:
egrets, herons, cormorants, pelicans, ducks, storks, and adjutants.
Smaller birds flitter in the shrubs and a few kites and eagles soar
overhead. We identified about 30 species, several which I'd also seen
at Chitwan. I added maybe 20 species to my life list and had a
wonderful day on the water. The day cost me extra--but was worth it.
The lake is recognized by UNESCO as a
biosphere reserve.
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| If you enlarge this photo you will see dozens of large flying birds. |
The rangers patrol the refuge and do
fish and bird censuses. They navigate the maze of marsh using trees
as landmarks, which must be difficult when the water level is so
often different. Part of their success is that most rangers are
former poachers, who now see the greater value in preserving their
natural asset.
My birding guide, Savann, represented
Osmose, an NGO that promotes conservation and community development
at the lake. They have a floating ecology school for children and a floating
community center for women in Pret Toal. With the Cambodian
government, they promote ecology and sustainability at the lake. For
info, go to www.osmosetonlesap.net. Contact my guide at
kasovann@yahoo.com.
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