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 GREAT LAKE (Tonle Sap Lake)

	Chhnok Trou is to fishing what Bangkok is to traffic. Ninety percent of the village people are fishermen, and every day they rise by 5 a.m., as their great grandfathers did, untie their motorized skiffs, and head 5 kilometers up stream to reach the Great Lake by dawn. On a lucky day in the dry season a family can catch as much as 100-200 kilos of fish, a haul that makes up for the slow days during the long monsoon. For travelers who take the boat up the Tonle Sap River to the Great Lake and then to Angkor Wat, the fishing skiffs scattered in numbers too big to count provide a glimpse of the river life: men slinging
their nets in the sun-dappled river; women in straw hats or checked kramas preparing a meal under the small thatched hut on board, children playing on deck. But the Tonle Sap River and Lake are much more than good fishing grounds. The river forms the heartland of Cambodia; it feeds and irrigates half the country and the river itself is an ecological wonder of the world for its biodiversity and its links to history. With out the Tonle Sap and the Great Lake, there would have been no Angkor Wat.

The way of life of the river people is very different from the life of the people who live in the fruit groves or in the paddies or in the forests or in Phnom Penh. Their village is inextricably linked with the river, and dramatic seasonal changes in its water level affect all aspects of their lives. The river people are constantly on the move, and as the water level rises and recedes they move as often as five or six times a year.

One thatched-roof hut floating on hollow bamboo poles with a small boy shooting on the roof floats by tugged along by a small motor skiff. All this moving of houses would drive a postman nut, but the residents say it’s no trouble to find their friends- “We just ask the neighbors where they move,â€