A Water Way of Living

 Visiting Cambodian villages was tremendous.  House after house on stilts with a rice field behind each one.  Dogs wandered all over.  Kids on bicycles passed on their way to school, ox-driven carts watched as our car drove by, and ladies sat by boiling palm oil cooking on mounds of earth fashioned into an oven to make a palm candy for passersby. 

When we neared our destination of a floating village, we saw houses hundreds of feet out into the water on stilts with boats arriving and people climbing ladders to get into them.  Apparently, when the dry season comes, the house can literally be lifted to be put further into the water to be nearer to fishing areas.

The floating village did not require any lifting to go with the water level.  A banquet hall adorned with the trappings of a wedding floated by us first.

Then we saw the church and got to stop at a market, which housed proof of Cambodia’s omnivorous ways…a drink containing a dead snake and a dead scorpion that was thought to enhance male vigor.

   

Inside the market was an alligator farm.

Around the village kids rode around from house to house with pets and for fun.

Or else they hung out in their house.

The sanitation in such an area where water for drinking comes from the same source as waste is just scary, but, according to our guide, we saw nothing bad because when the dry season was upon them the water was so low that it was thick with brown dirt.  Life living on the water was no beach vacation.