A Slow Boat to Battambang

In Phnom Penh we had decided to not return from Siem Reap directly, but to take a longer circular route back. Outbound we had travelled up the north side of the Tonlé Sap Lake, though we didn’t see any of the lake. Our return trip would take us south of the lake, though we wouldn’t see any of it on the return. But from Siem Reap we would travel west to Battambang by boat, crossing the northwest section of the lake and up the Sangker River into this mid-sized city.

Tour books rightly describe this is a beautiful excursion. They also describe it as a trip of variable length, ranging from 4 to 7 hours, based on the levels of the Tonlé Sap Lake. During the wet season the Tonlé Sap River flows into the lake, which expands from 2500 sq km to 13,000 sq km. As the water levels drop and the shoreline recedes the boat route becomes more convoluted. This was impressed upon us mid-day when we spent hours motoring through narrow channels among trees growing out of the lake. Wrongly, we thought our trip, just at the end of the rainy season, would be on the shorter side. But our boat set off at 8:00am and docked in Battambang after 4:00pm. It was a beautiful, tranquil ride at 8 hours; it would have been a beautiful, tranquil ride at 4 hours.

The day began grey with an early ride from Siem Reap to the shores of the Tonlé Sap. Given the fluid nature of the lake’s shoreline, the boat launched from a causeway built kilometers out into the lake. About 20 of us loaded onboard, some sitting close to the water line inside the boat, others perched on the roof. The boat is really similar to a bus. Inside are rows of paired seats, four across with a centre aisle. The sides are paneless windows. Topside, the bow is flat and square, a good tanning deck, and the roof long and flat, with passengers slumped against bags and knapsacks. And like a bus trip in Canada, midway we stop at a bus station for lunch.

The first few hours of our journey we traverse vast expanses of open water. There is no real shoreline on the Tonlé Sap, just a slow transition from open water to occasional trees and shrubs to more dense, but still water bound, growth. Because 75% of Cambodia’s fish come from the lake it is a busy, populated place. There are villages suspended over the waters, and villagers who have never set foot on solid ground. At we wend westward we pass single huts built on stilts, a thin line of smoke rising from the cooking stove, a boat tied to an abutting tree. Further west we encounter several small villages with children paddling about as kids in Canada ride bicycles.

In one floating village we pass a temple, large and imposing, with the typical steep gold roof, the whole, built on stills, rising out of the lake. In another, a long string of connected barges slowly moving a forest of logs out into the Tonlé Sap passes an old women drying flat breads on the deck of her boat. And the lunch stop, a floating convenient store, ready for us with steaming pots of rice, soup, curries; and on the porch a deep icy cooler of pop and beer. Despite the bounty, for the vegetarians there is rice and a single dish of vegetables.

As we near the Sangker River the sun burns the cloud cover off and the tree growth expands. We now motor through passageways between thickets of scrub trees. For several hours we crawl along these pathways, frequently whipped by long branches that scrape the boat and snap into the openings along the sides. Despite the tranquility of the trip and the lure of a good book, vigilance is required. Several times we encounter oncoming traffic, forcing us to nose into the trees as the two boats squeak and scrape past each other.

Finally, we spy a clump of solid ground, a small patch of grass with a cut bank of mud rising 20 cm above the water. Now more and more land. And finally, a river bank (only one) but clearly the start of the Sangker River. Now we pass groups of people, net fishing from boats or the shore, waving as we pass. Still there are many hours to go, but the bustle on the shorelines provides a more engaging preoccupation.