Cambodian Life: The River and the Land

 I've left the Mekong behind and replaced it with the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat. But the river stays with me. At this end of the river, near Seim Reap, there is a tributary of the Mekong, the Tonle River, that takes you to the most incredible lake in SEAsia, the Tonle Sap Lake. The picture above was taken close to where the Tonle intersects the Mekong.

I miss waking up to the sound of fisherman's diesel fueled motor as they set their pre-dawn nets.The catch goes back to one of hundreds of villages along the river where women split the small fish in two, then skewer them onto a dowel and smoke them. When they're finished, they are mashed into a fish paste that is used in cooking a variety of dishes.
In these river villages, the houses are on stilts to protect them during the three month floods. The water rises onto the steep riverbank between twelve and fifteen feet. The villagers are in peril very year.

Some houses are made using bamboo for the base and palm branches for the sides and top.Because of the the weather, the palm branches have to be completely replaced every three to four years. Can you imagine having to side your house three times in a decade?

Electricity varies from village to village. But generally, our guide Roth said that there is some electricity available to homes from dawn until noon. After that, the only sources are battery power ( used almost exclusively to power their TVs!) and kerosene or glow lights. There are no refrigerators, so women shop for produce from the local market twice a day. There's the familiar at the market like tomatoes, cabbage, onions. And the unfamiliar like century eggs--duck eggs that are placed in a saline solution and essentially preserved. The eggs take on a smokey grey exterior appearance. in side, the yold is firm and turns black while the egg white is geatinous and translucent. Farm animals live under or adjacent to the one room house--water buffalo, pigs ( we say twelve piglets not more than a couple of weeks old).

Education is compulsory through the sixth grade. A small percentage, about 10%, complete high school which often requires significant travel. Roth said that he traveled 24Km every day to attend high school-- including during the monsoon season.
Rice is the biggest export crop, and Roth would say that the Cambodians raise the rice--as much as four tons are produced per hectare--and sell it to the Thais who act a s the broker. It irks the Cambodians because the Thais claim on the final bagged rice that it is Thai rice. The rice fields are a yellow green, and more often than not, as we passed there was at least one person working in those fields, the water up to midcalf, their bodies hunched over the growing rice stalks. There is rice growing even in the rainy season. That rice, " special rice" can handle the flooding and this long grain rice will grow as high as the water level rises--even if it gets to five or six feet,

In terms of ethnicity, many countries in SEAsia are also the home of immigrants from southern China during the early part of the last century. So, Khmer and Chinese are intermarried although the Cambodians ( nor the Vietnamese for that matter ) seem to talk about that. One of the passengers on the riverboat had that exact story. His grandfather left China to find more opportunity, hitched on a boat headed for Singapore-- and stayed there only returning to So. China once and then saying there was no reason to return.

This primer, of sorts, isn't intended to be complete but to provide a smattering of the complexities faced by the current Cambodian who is poor, uneducated largely and performing techniques that have been used for fishing and farming for hundreds and hundreds of years.
M.C.