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Vietnam & Cambodia
Saturday, November 16, 2013. Siem Reap, Cambodia
Our guide Borin told the eight of us on Friday that our last guided tour the next day would be handled by a guide who specialized in birds of the region and that we had to be at the front desk at 5:30 am ready to hop on the van to spend the day in the Prek Toal floating village learning about the birds of the region. None of us quite knew what to expect which was probably good because from 5:30am to 4:30 pm we had an "over the top" experience birdwatching, touring a floating village, climbing a bamboo ladder onto a platform in the rangers' Swiss Family Robinson Style tree house, walking on top of crocodile cages, watching the young and old members of a family weaving water hyacinth fronds into baskets and placemats, among other things. Our young guide, Naran, exuded a love of nature and a love for his job. He was comfortable speaking English explaining that at the age of 19 he spent 3 hours a day studying with the monks. Prior to working as a tour guide he worked at a hotel and as a tuk-tuk driver. Back to bird watching.... Naran lent us his company's high-powered binoculars to spot colonies of birds native to SE Asia. In some cases the birds were the same as the water birds native to the tropical parts of Florida such as the cormorants, anhingas, terns, egrets, and Great Blue Herons. On our small wooden motor boat with a canvas awning, we powered through beautiful jungle Everglades looking for birds. I was a little leery about spending all day doing bird watching because early in the morning we only spotted a few birds. As Fran commented, "There's another black one!" But, things picked up when we saw hundreds of white Asian Openbills with pink legs perched on an island of trees. Naran said that the Openbills stay together and live in the same grouping of trees for a year until those trees die then they move on. The other birds move from tree to tree. Though we didn't get close to the birds we ended up seeing some species unique to SE Asia such as the Blue Bee-eater, The Oriental Darter, the Racket -tailed Treepie, and the Black Drongo. We motored over to the all concrete building named the Wildlife Conservation Society and took panoramic photos of the 150 floating houses from the top of the structure. To get from the dock to the building we had to carefully balance on a narrow piece of bamboo across the water. We helped each other get across so no one would fall in. This floating village has no sewage control so everything goes right into the river. The water did look muddy and I didn't notice any kids swimming though I am sure they do to cool off. I never saw anything like this village. The houses rose with the water levels during the rainy/flood season (May -October) foundations floats and all. Roads disappeared due to flooding, the trees survived underwater, and everybody got around by boat throughout the year. We saw a floating gas station, ate lunch at a floating restaurant, passed a modest hotel, saw the grocery boat where the young woman stopped at every house to see what they needed, and passed a woman in her boat selling modern clothing from house to house. The main industry is fishing, the men going out at 3:00 am in small fishing boats, one or two people per boat, returning in the early afternoon for the day. The men, women, and children all work hard to survive but seem happy and bonded to the community and each other. We noticed satellite dishes, tv's and cell phones so they have modernized their lives to some extent.We also happened to see a motor boat pulling a house through the water. Naran said this family was moving to a new neighborhood which they can do because of high water or they don't like their neighbors. How convenient!
Local girls pulled up to the dock of our restaurant in their canoes to take us for a close up tour of the village. We rode two passengers per boat, the teens racing (with Naran's egging them on) to see who could get us first to the fish farm then to the crocodile farm. We saw hundreds of catfish eating the small fish for lunch. The term "feeding frenzy" has taken on new meaning for me. The crocodile pits were unreal. We were told to walk onto the top of the wooden cages to get a good look at them. They were huge and cooled down by opening their mouths. They kept 70 crocs in a cage lying all over each other, the oldest one being 30 years old. One of us dropped her lens cap and screamed because the sound stirred up the crocodiles. But, thankfully the cap didn't fall through the grate and we didn't lose any limbs. We arrived back at the hotel around 4:30, time enough to unload, gather for a two for one Happy Hour, and ate in our hotel's open- air restaurant.
This is Betel Nut (Janet) signing off from Cambodia.
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