World Wildlife Fund

Day Fourteen and Fifteen: Angkor Wat and the Tonle Sap
There is nothing more awe-inspiring than Angkor in sunrise. We walk in silence, marveling at the size of the temples and the weight of history that presses on us. I have been anticipating this moment since flying into Siem Reap yesterday.

The Angkor temples, a World Heritage Site, were built during a long stretch between 9th and the 15th century and number over a thousand! Angkor Wat, the most awe-inspiring of them all, took over 30 years and shows showing an incredible display of Hindu and Khmer art.

The temples are incredibly diverse in style and condition. Some like Preah Khan have given way to the marauding forests. Some are giant serene faces that will remain imprinted in our memories. Some only have empty walls standing and nothing else. And some are over run by busloads of tourists. My favorite is the Bakheng, a small mountain temple honoring Siva, with flowers pushing through the stone, silent and tranquil in the afternoon light. The Angkor kings started out as Hindus and ended as Buddhists. Today, more than one Angkor temple is a living monastery for Theravada Buddhists.

The bas reliefs capture life for all Khmers; the modest fisherman plying his nets, the soldier fighting off attacking Cham, the general in charge of the troops, and the women waiting at home for their return. The reliefs also capture monkeys half hidden in the carved leaves, gigantic fish that seem to be smiling in the waves, elephants with men on them and elephants nestling their young in the wild, pouncing tigers and large koupreys, all part of the Khmer world over ten centuries ago. And, still they stand, an integral part of Cambodia's today.

Nearby the Angkor temples is the Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Asia and the heart of Cambodia. It is easily distinguishable from space. The Tonle Sap is unique because every monsoon season, the Mekong river swells up so much that the waters flow back into the Tonle Sap river and force the lake to increase five times in size. Not surprisingly, the lake is very rich in biodiversity and fisheries.

The water is an oily black when we get on the boat. It is hard to believe that this is only a lake; it spreads out as far as I can see. Our boat is heading for Prek Toal village, a fairly well off fishing community, where we will visit a local school attached to the Environment Research Station of the Prek Toal Biosphere Reserve. We watch other boats glide by; some of them have regular cargo, carrying kerosene or rice from one end to the other. But others are actual shops, full of clothes or vegetables that go calling from houseboat to houseboat. There are water taxis, carrying children to school. There are water restaurants where the cook will quickly fry up something you point at in little kerosene stoves

The people of the Tonle Sap live on the lake and I mean that literally. Everything is on the water; houses, entire villages, even schools; they all rest on floating rafts some of which are connected to the land by wooden planks. There are people here who will live out their entire lives, moving with the water, on this incredibly bountiful enormous lake.

As we get close, some of the water ways are near impassable due to the overgrowth of water hyacinth. It is an invasive species in the rest of the world, quickly choking other plant life and destroying river ecologies. But here, the people have learned to harvest it for their use and also use it as a barrier against choppy water and strong tides. Keep in mind that the water can rise up to thirty feet in the monsoon season! And, yes - all of this is in danger. There are at least two hydropower dams built in southern China already, Manwan and Dachaoshan. Another, Xiaowan, is under construction. And many many more are planned.