Birdwatching

In memory of dear departed Andy, we decided to take a break from ruins and go ornithological. This time we paid for the full guided tour as we wanted to get a better feel for Cambodian life in this region, little knowing what we were signing ourselves up for. I've mentioned the Tonle Sap Lake in previous posts and that it is seasonally expanded during the wet season due to an unusual hydrologic "back up" system from the Mekong River. What was hitherto unapparent was the size of the swell: the surface area of the lake going from 2500 sq kms to 12,000 sq kms, a five-fold increase. That means that practically every bit of dry land we've seen will be under water in a few months time as this picture from the Wikipeadia shows. We've been told that the hundreds of shacks and houses we've seen on the river banks that are not already on six foot stilts are picked up wholesale and moved to higher ground, I gather by hauling them with big bamboo sticks. Everything else is nomadic by virtue of being "floating cities".

We chose a tour from Taraboat but, alas, not with any prior intelligence. Our guide was keen and friendly and spoke passable Enlish, enough to make a few jokes with on the long water crossings. We had to set the alarm at 0500 hrs again, something I was never especially good at even when I was working shifts!!! Taken by taxi from the hotel, we started with a moderately-sized boat to cross the lake from the nearest floating town to Siem Reap (Chong Khneas). Directly north west from Chon Khneas is the floating town of Prek Toal, where we changed to a smaller boat. That took us to the great bamboo "shield wall" in the sea surrounding the 31,000 hectares of the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve (read: bird sanctuary) where the guide and captain had to manually open the barrier in order to steam further up the coast for a few kilometers. Now much of this was subject to trial and error because of the nature of the geography: it changed in structure so much that even the locals got lost. Add to that the need to circumvent kilometer-long bamboo fish traps that drove the fish trying to escape the dwindling water level to convenient "catchpoints", it took quite a few hours to actually get to the inlet where our destination lay. Another hour up the inlet and we swapped to a still smaller boat (I wondered why we were towing a tiny paddle boat complete with a quiet man sat cross legged in a straw hat). From there he steered us both up a narrow stream where, admittedly, we saw hundreds of storks, cormorants, Greater and Lesser Adjutants, blue tailed bee eaters, pelicans and other birds that I am not at liberty to name, sweeping off the nearby tree tops at the sound of our chugging engines. After a while, he turned off the engines and commenced paddling for another hour to where the water stpopped. That's when it got interesting. We later discovered that the water level had dropped even more than the locals expected: the boat was supposed to take us to the landing platform on the tree house. Linda elected to stay on the boat. I had to take off my shoes and roll my trousers up. The last 50 metres to the tree house involved an extremely squelchy, knee deep, perilously sucky, step-by-step walk through the swamp. And if I thought that was bad, my feet were so covered in slimy grey mud, they couldn't grip the smooth bamboo ladder that was supposed to take me another 30 vertical metres up onto the platform of the tree house. I made it, lungs panting like the aforementioned arthritic steam engine, shaking from fear (not good with heights when my feet don't work), and sweating so much every article of clothing was plastered to me like a second, sticky skin. I'd like to say it was worth it, but all the birds (and there were thousands) were on the tops of trees hundreds of metres away.

Still, the company employees thought it was funny, and they did treat us to cold beer and one of the best Cambodian meals we'd had up 'til then (I'll charitably forebear from mentioning that it was already included in the hefty price of the trip). It's difficult to get mad at Cambodians although I would like a face-to-face word with the Aussie who owns Taraboat (he claimed I was "breaking up" when I spoke to him on my guide's mobile from the tree house -- yeah, right!). Still, worthy of a blog entry, if nothing else, and Linda thought it was a great day (but, then, she had the sense to stay in the boat!).