It’s our last day in Cambodia, and for our final day’s activities we took a trip up to Tonle Sap lake. It’s the main water supply for almost the whole country, and has the distinction of being the only lake that is fed (or depending on the season, starved) by a bi-directional source; the Mekong river. During the wet season, the lake grows in volume approx. four times, and people who live on the land nearby have to move uproot and move their houses to dry land.

The most fascinating thing about this area though is the people who live on the water. We took an hour long boat trip upstream to visit a massive floating village which spreads as far as the eye can see.

The population here is split right down the middle, with Vietnamese people on one side and Cambodian fishermen on the other. Despite the largely Muslim and Buddhist population there is still room for a floating Catholic church. Also ever present is the ubiquitous tourist souvenir shop.

There a lot of children here in the area, and unfortunately it seems as though they’ve come to expect sweets from tourists. As soon as you arrive on the scene they descend on you en-masse, pushing and snatching to get to you to see what you have. If they don’t approach you on land, then they paddle themselves around in small cauldrons approaching tourist boats with hands in the air.

I think the local guides have been providing tourists with large bags of sweets (as we were) to give to children in order to send them on their way ASAP, but as far as I’m concerned this is a really bad idea. None of these kids have access to proper dental care, so to provide them with a lot of something that will rot their teeth extremely quickly just to get rid of them is extremely selfish and ultimately short-sighted.