Floating VIllage at Sunset

(written 16/08/09, posted 03/10/09)


We wake late and leave a message for W to pick us up even later. L and I don't feel quite up to another round of sight-seeing just yet and it's pretty exhausting in the heat. I've been drinking what feels like about 5 litres of water a day and I feel like I'm addicted to salty foods.

We splash out $5 to use the local hotel swimming pool. All I can do is swim, read and try to recuperate. I'm still feeling a bit ropey. We're not even drinking or eating that much each evening and being out in town can be a bit depressing. Everything is cheap and the pubs and restaurants vie for business by undercutting each other. The kids swarm the streets begging and the result is a horrible clash of poverty and tourists treating themselves. I've taken to carrying around little bags of food like nuts and dried fruit to give the kids. L and I have a rule of no cash as it encourages begging. This is especially true of kids in the daytime who we suspect are kept away from school by their parents so they can go and earn money. I feel pretty naive and I'm sure we could do more but I just don't know how.


W announces it's time to go to the floating village and to see the sunset on the lake. It seems like a nice thing to do too after the madness of the earlier. We were at the temple where one of the Tomb Raider films had been shot and all we could here was people running around shouting 'Lara Croft! Lara Croft!'

As W drives us away from the temple complexes, we notice how the shacks and shops on the roadside get poorer. Pulling up at the harbour we get offered $15 each for a boat out to the village. It wasn't in our contract. We cough up anyway and get ushered onto a boat. What comes next is an astounding level of poverty. People live on boats, some with no power. A father pulls alongside and a shivering toddler jumps on to sell us cans of drink. There is a floating church, a school, villager's houses, shops and ...a crocodile farm. We get accosted into buying pens for the school and we are encouraged to visit the school to hand over the pens. The children are clearly used to this but look on bored. It all feels manufactured to try and get tourists in and neither of us want to be here, peering at people's lives where the average annual income is $500. They don't need tourism here, they need aid.

L and I get in the tuk-tuk depressed and W doesn't understand why. He spends the whole journey trying to cheer us up. We decide tomorrow is going to be a productive day and we're going to do positive stuff. That's if I can actually stand up tomorrow.