Living over Water - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 223

FIGURE 14.7 ( Continued ) Village homes are left dozens of meters in the air once the flood
levels recede following the drainage of the lake.
Tourism is growing at a rapid rate around Tonle Sap, today at levels approach-
ing over half a million visitors a year, up from numbers of about three hundred
thousand only half a decade ago. Most of this is related to the presence of the
Angkor ruins, which are truly one of the most revered archaeological sites in
the world. Increasingly, however, “overruined” tourists are seeking a break from
staring at fellow tourists staring at bas-reliefs and are venturing out onto the
lake to observe what some call “the people of the lake … a communion between
man and nature” (Bailleux 2003). Unfortunately, for many this means nothing
more than hiring a “tuk-tuk” or motorbike taxi for the short ride south from
Siem Reap to the village of Chong Khneas situated at the base of Phnom Krom
(Figure 14.11).
Here the squalor (Figure 14.12) must come as quite a shock to those tourists stay-
ing in thousand-dollar-a-night hotel rooms located only 15 km away. Although it is
possible to see many of the characteristic features of the floating villages, proximity
to the major tourist center of Siem Reap means that Chong Khneas is not really a
typical fishing village. For the more adventurous and those with more time, it is pos-
sible to travel from the “Angkor tourist scene” via road and hired boat to visit more
distant villages. Here tourists are few and it is still possible to catch a glimpse of
lake life unadulterated by artificiality or tokenism (Figure 14.13). As is the situation
in the floating villages of Lake Titicaca described below, such a visit on the Tonle
Sap is probably the closest that one can come to experiencing what life might have
once been like in the Iraqi marshlands. People paddling about on simple watercraft,
smiling children swimming, and fishermen or -women going about their daily lives
(Figure 14.14) all call to mind photos of the same from Iraq (e.g., Wheeler in Young
1977; France 2007).