Boating on TonleSap or Oh Crap, We're Going to Die

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  Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia
Sunday, August 10, 2008

Battambang is the definition of a sleepy little provincial capital, laying to the west of Tonle Sap Lake along the Stung Sangker River.  The town and province was devastated during the Khmer Rouge era by some of the worst purges of that nightmarish time.  Today it is a quiet destination that rolls up the sidewalks at night, and possesses a combination of interesting wats and classic colonial architecture.  The countryside is beautiful, looking like a spread from a National Geographic article with beautiful wats, ancient ruins, and small villages of traditional Cambodian stilt houses.  People toil in the rice fields, bent over harvesting rice much the way it has always been done.  After the wonders but in your face tourism of Siem Riep, it seemed just the thing for a taste of lesser travelled Cambodia.

Two options presented themselves for the journey to Battambang

Tonle Sap Lake and River

.  The first was a bus trip along the rock and roll road back towards the border that we had already suffered through once, and were not eager to do again.  The second was to take a bus down to the shore of Tonle Sap Lake and make our way by boat to Battambang.  This trip has plenty of detractors, and we read more than one story of people being stranded, standing up to their necks in water for hours until another boat happened by that rescued them.  Shoddy boats, dodgy operators, unexpected waves on the lake, and so on were all listed as reasons not to do the trip.  Faced with the devil we knew (the horrid border road) and the devil we didn't, we decided to roll the dice, pack out water wings and take the boat.

The area around Tonle Sap where we caught the boat looked like a refugee squatter's camp.  Tattered old bamboo thatch houses sat on stilts above water and mud and a thin, muddy strip of land extended into the lake where fishing boats, floating rafts, house boats, and our transport awaited.  The reason for the stilted houses was the nature of Tonle Sap Lake itself.  During the rainy season, the volume of the Mekong River is so vast, it actually forces Tonle Sap river to flow back onto itself.  At this time, the lake swells in size dramatically, growing from 3000 square kilometres to nearly 13,000 square kilometres.  In the dry season, the process reverses and the lake shrinks back to its original size

Tonle Sap Lake and River

.  This constant movement of water and soil makes the lake one of the world's richest fresh water fishing grounds, and many people live year round on its waters making their living from fishing.  The lake's surface area changes quite drastically, and as a result is often quite shallow.  In the dry season when the lake was a fraction of its inundated state, one can see houses out in the lake twenty metres or more in the air, the water that lapped at its floorboards in the wet season a distance memory.  Now, at the end of the wet season, the lake was full, and boat travel possible.  Our course would take us across part of the lake, and onwards into an adjoining river that would eventually bring us to Battambang.

Getting out of the minivan lead to the usual scrum of young men pushing and grappling for the privilege of grabbing our bags and carrying them the few metres to the boat, and of course, expecting a significant payment in return.  Since I am a firm believer in the theory that if you can't carry your own bag, you shouldn't travel, Danayi and I grabbed our packs and made our way to the boat.  Avoiding the larger mud patches, dodging through the jostling crowd, and balancing our way over other boats and thin boards required an acrobat's balance.  I questioned our wisdom in our attempts to save a few riels.  Finally we stumbled onto our boat, stuck our bags under our seats, and after a while we were underway

Tonle Sap Lake and River

.

The boat was just wide enough for two seats on either side of an isle that ran the length of it.  As we slowly made our way from the settlement by the lake, we passed floating homes, merchants with their wares piled in boats paddling from customer to customer, and even a floating school where students played in the school 'yard' about a metre and a half in width and about six metres in length attached to the back of the building.  The boat slowly started the journey out to the lake proper, as we passed through hundreds of mangroves and trees that were rooted in the soil a metre or two under the water.  In the dry season, these trees would be simply growing out of dry ground, but now were lake denizens.  After about an hour of many false trails, dead ends, reversing, and simply bulling our way through dense under brush, we reached the lake.

Tonle Sap Lake, in its wet season size, is simply huge.  Heading out onto its open water felt very similar to heading out on the ocean.  The view into the distance offered no far off shoreline, only a shimmering watery horizon.  Another similarity to the open sea soon became apparent as waves began to rock our small, shallow boat up, down, and side to side.  For someone who loves travel, and loves nothing more than rocketing along on a motorcycle through winding mountain roads, I seem often butt clinchingly nervous on some forms of public transportation

Tonle Sap Lake and River

.  I have discovered that small boats in big waves are one of the forms that do not inspire confidence.  While other tourists on the boats causally laughed and passed the time, and Danayi looked comfortably into the distance, I sat taut and rigid.  Every time the boat rocked to one side, I tried to subtly shift my weight to the other side, offered some semblance of counter balance.  Although intellectually I'm sure I knew my weight shifting would not make a difference (despite the Nepali national obsession with calling me fat, I'm not that big), I could not relax, convinced the shifting of my clinched ass was saving us all from a watery grave (or at least an unpleasant wading session of many kilometres).

Eventually we passed through the biggest open water section of the lake, and began to pass through floating villages that were simply too interesting to continue being nervous.  Many of these sea gypsies people live their entire year on the water in domiciles ranging in size from floating houses to tiny covered sampans.  With their livelihood coming from the lake, and any non-perishable needs arriving by merchants in boats, there is little need to leave the water.  Tiny dugout canoes and outboards ran from house to house, and occasionally a larger building could be seen on a higher piece of ground that generally stayed dry all year round.

Tonle Sap Lake and River

After pushing our way towards the shore through more villages and vegetation, we eventually found the mouth of the river that was to take us to Battambang.  We cruised sedately down the placid river, and enjoyed the scenes and scenery of lives lived far differently from our own.  Life was good, we were in Cambodia, and having ourselves a nice little boat trip - until we turned into the canal of horror.

After an hour or more of traveling along the main river, our drivers decided to turn off into a over grown channel.  Apparently this was either a short cut to Battambang, or a necessary detour to cut over to the actual river that continued to the town; no one seemed to know.  What was certain very quickly was the entire idea was a big mistake.  In a lake the size of Tonle Sap, but as shallow as it is, even twenty four hours of rain or sunshine can make a significant difference in the depth of the channels and waterways attached to it.  While our short cut might have been deeper and more passable 24 hours before, it was clearly too shallow now.

Not ones to let common sense deter them, our boat drivers pressed on.  The further we got into the jungle of vegetation, the more frequently we had to stop and wait for a little Cambodian boat boy who scampered out along the boat's long propeller axle to clear the reeds, grass and branches that jammed the propeller

Tonle Sap Lake and River

.  As we continued, spewing huge clouds of noxious exhaust as the drivers revved the engine to a screaming point, the banks of the channel grew closer and closer until we could reach out and brush the ground pushing up against either side of our boat.  The wooden sides of our boat occasionally squealed in protest as the banks squeezed tighter and tighter.  Our progress could be measured in feet and inches over the time that passed, not in metres and kilometres.
 
As the passengers in the boat in the boat looked around at each other, there was a resigned look that seemed to say "What are you going to do? It's Cambodia."  At least we couldn't sink in the apparently six inches of water we were trying to pass through.

Then the trees attacked.

As the banks of the channel grew closer, so too had the reaching branches of the many scrub brushes and brambles lining the shore.  As we slowly pushed our way into the mass, branches began to be pulled back by the wall of the boat, and then snap into the open sitting area with brutal power and whip like velocity.  People began to cry out and move to the centre of the boat to escape taking a speeding branch in the face

Tonle Sap Lake and River

.  The boat operators quickly moved around, and pulled down fabric curtains over the open sides of the boat.  While normally used to shade from a hot sun, they were now protection against the bending branches being forced back by our boat.  The red curtains cast a bloody hue in the interior of the boat, while the hundreds of branches pressing up against them looked like so many claws of evil beasts determined to rend and tear at those huddling inside.  Eventually, they proved too much for the curtains, and larger sharper branches began to rip through the fabric, tearing long holes the length of the boat.  (See the movie in the photo section for an example).

The operators took turns at the front of the boat using poles to try and help the boat make headway.  Finally, when many had given up hope of ever making it out of this watery labyrinth, we lurched through the last of the trees and brush, and re-entered the main river.  Breaths released, the rest of the trip was a pleasant cruise along banks teeming with the lives of rural farmers and fishermen.  Children played in the river, while men stood chest deep holding massive nets strung along bamboo that were skilfully moved to catch fish.  Smaller boats plied past us, filled with fish, rice, and other necessities of a life lived far from towns.

Eventually we arrived at the outskirts of Battambang, and disembarked

Tonle Sap Lake and River

.  Leaving the boat first, I clamoured up the embankment only to hear the crowd gasp behind me.  As Danayi left the boat, the heaviness of her pack and flimsiness of the gangplank proved too much, and she fell, landing heavily in the gap between the bank and the boat.   As I struggled back towards her, a gallant little Cambodian man jumped in, and helped her back out.  Bruised, both physically and mentally, she made her way onto the bank where I hugged her and tried to tell myself I wasn't a bad boyfriend.  Eventually we threw our bags into a waiting minivan and headed to town.

We had escaped the demon trees with our lives, but somewhere out there, they still lurk.  Be afraid.

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Tonle Sap Lake and River	Tonle Sap Lake and River	Trees Gone Wild!

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