On the Water but Not Adrift: The Floating Villages of Cambodia

Visiting Kompong Khleang with Community First was an incredible and eye-opening experience that you should absolutely reserve a day for when in Siem Reap! Most tour companies to other villages, especially Chong Kneas, are tourist traps. I am not affiliated with them in any way; I just thought the experience was fascinating, sensitive to the community, and realistic about the challenges facing these villages.

Floating villages are a phenomenon I had not heard of before planning our trip to Cambodia, but our visit to Kompong Khleang turned out to be a highlight of our trip to Southeast Asia. If you are already heading to Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat, the extra day to visit Kompong Khleang is well worth it.

Which Village to Visit

Of the four villages, the most popular is Chong Kneas, but it is a miserable tourist trap. All of the operators offering tours are private companies, so your tourism dollars do not even flow into the village, where they are badly needed. Chong Kneas remains the most popular village due to its proximity to Siem Reap, and it has also been suggested that tuk tuk drivers, hotels, and others involved in tourism in the area get kickbacks for sending tourists there.

After doing a lot of research, it was clear that our best option was to visit Kompong Khleang with Community First, a tour group comprised of guides from the village that funnels its profits back into the village. Our guide, Paren, grew up in the village — through him, we got an intimate glimpse into life there, as well as the unexpected difficulties associated with trying to improve the health and wellbeing of its residents. Community First’s profits go toward the school they run in Kompong Khleang, where they teach reading and writing Khmer to 6-7 year olds and run a sewing school for adults. They are constantly working to improve life in the village through the school and other initiatives and are well-equipped to do so given their connection to it. The tour is a great way to support the organization and learn about a unique place and way of life.

Visiting Kompong Khleang

Our van picked us up at our hotel in Siem Reap. The tour got interesting immediately; the main road was closed due to construction, so we had to take a back road for the first bit of the journey. The term "road" is generous; we drove along an unpaved, red dust path with potholes 2-3ft deep unavoidably scattered throughout. Our guides memorably referred to it as the "massage road" because all the jostling was sure to pummel our muscles.

Eventually, we made it to a paved road, and after a while, we stopped at a bamboo sticky rice stall. Bamboo sticky rice is a Cambodian treat - sticky rice is wrapped in bamboo and grilled over charcoal. You then peel back the bamboo to reveal the rice, and eat it! It's delicious - a little sweet but not too sweet, and very filling.

Our second stop along the way to Kompong Khleang was at a local Cambodian bakery, where we watched women make Cambodian baked goods like Ginger Cookies, Cambodian Donuts, and waffle cone-like cookies, and got to try them all hot off the presses. Fun fact: there is no ginger in the ginger cookies - they are so named because they look like ginger root!

Life in the Village

Kompong Khleang feels like an alternate reality. That it is reachable only by boat, not because it is on an island, but because the houses sit in the water, is otherworldy. It is easy to get caught up in the strange beauty of the village; vibrant green, blue, and red houses appear to float on the water, children play in the water, and fishermen row by in long thin boats. But while it’s clear that there is real joy in the village, the reality is that these communities are incredibly poor and live without most of the modern conveniences we take for granted — most shockingly clean drinking water.

Our tour guide Paren grew up in the Kompong Khleang community, born to a father from the village and a mother from elsewhere in Cambodia. When he was around 10, his parents divorced, and his mother took him with her out of the village. So Paren is the perfect person to be able to speak to life in the village and compare it to life in the rest of Cambodia. He filled us in on how difficult it is to improve living conditions in the floating villages due to them being so isolated and impoverished.

Water Filtration

The floating villages are surrounded by the water of the Tonle Sap Lake. They have no typical plumbing, so they use this water for everything from bathing to drinking. With human waste in the water right around their homes, water-borne illness abounds. A doctor who was on our tour with us as a guest said he's come to these villages as part of traveling health clinics before, and he has treated numerous villagers for parasites they acquire from drinking the water. Despite explaining that the unfiltered water is the cause of these illnesses, he finds people sick year after year. He was visibly disheartened by the lack of progress his clinic had made.

Paren explained that Community First had raised money to purchase in-home water filters for families in the village. Each one cost $5,000 and it was an enormous effort. It's been a couple of years and I don't remember all the details, but essentially, the filters only worked well for a bit; at some change of seasons, the villagers stored the filters under their houses, and dirty Tonle Sap water got into the filters, making them unusable for a second year. Villagers hadn't understood the importance of water filtration, how to protect their water filters, or both. Paren had spoken earlier of how difficult it was to improve life in these villages; this story really helped me understand why.

Plastic in the Lake

Over time, Kompong Khleang residents have started to eat and otherwise consume things that come wrapped in plastic. As plastic is relatively new to the village, residents had little education around the environmental impact of littering and simply toss their plastic scraps into the water. These of course dirty the water further and harm the fish in the lake.

Education

Paren also described how difficult it was to demonstrate the value of education to villagers. Virtually the only employment found in the village is fishing. Kids go to school initially, but drop out early to help their parents fish. Paren himself only finished school because his mother removed him from the village at a young age, before he might have dropped out. Thus, save Paren and perhaps another guide or two, there are virtually no examples of people getting an education, let alone benefiting from it, and villagers see no reason to invest in education for themselves or their children. Paren and Community First are trying very hard to change this by funding a school that we visited in Kompong Khleang. They are trying to ensure literacy among the children (rates are extremely low in these villages), and they are also providing classes to teach adults crafts such as tailoring and making clothes.

While it's difficult to see people in abject poverty and struggling with treatable illnesses, I highly recommend a visit to Kompong Khleang with Community First. It is amazing to see a village in a lake, having built its way of life around the enormous resource they live in, and it is important to learn about people who live so differently from ourselves. Plus, by going with Community First, you will learn from guides from the village, and your tour fees will support efforts to improve conditions there.

Community First

I simply can’t say enough good things about Community First. On top of their deep connection to Kompong Khleang and work to improve village life, they run a great tour. The van was clean, air conditioned, and comfortable, and our driver provided water for us. Community First was also incredibly responsive via email, and they worked with us to accommodate our flight schedule by providing a morning tour rather than an afternoon tour. There are no other tours that I’m aware of that follow this model, and I strongly recommend them.