Geographically, Cambodia is a very wet and hot country, making it very conducive for fishing and rice farming. In the center of the country between the cities of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap is a gigantic lake called the Tonlé Sap. The Tonlé Sap River, which flows southward from the lake, is a tributary of the Mekong. Cambodia’s weather is punctuated by two major seasons, the wet season and the dry season. It rains so much during the wet season that the depth of the Tonlé Sap increases by dozens of feet each year. There is so much water that the Tonlé Sap River actually reverses flow backwards into the Tonlé Sap by the end of the rainy season. This gigantic shift in water levels brings a huge amount of nutrients in the lake, and is the reason Tonlé Sap is one of the most productive fishing lake in the world.
Tonlé Sap
Logan and I had the opportunity to take a long boat ride of Tonlé Sap when we were in Cambodia last Fall. The river culture of the Cambodians who live on Tonlé Sap is amazing! Some of their homes are built on stilts several stories tall, while others are simply anchored houseboats. During the dry season their small communities are on dry land. But by the end of the rainy season the Tonlé Sap rises up to the bottom of the stilts. We saw several children barely old enough to walk piloting small boats (or simply large buckets) with paddles all by themselves! In many instances, the families even had pet dogs, and floating cages of pigs next to their houses.
It was the end of the rainy season when Logan and I visited last November. It fact, it was one of the worst monsoons in the area in recent history; and several parts of Cambodia (and Thailand) were damaged by flooding last year. When I go back to Cambodia in June it will be toward the end of the dry season. So I should see a very different version of the country this time.
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