First stop was to a Lotus (the flower) farm. Here ladies sat all day cutting lotus stems into about 10cm lengths and pulling out fibre from the centre of the stems. These fibres were then amalgamated, spun and turned into a very fine fabric for making clothing. End result was something akin to silk and so high end. The wooden structures on the shores of the lotus lake were weekend holiday cottages.
Onto Tonil Sap lake and aboard a boat from the jetty along a tributary to the main lake. At this time of year approaching the driest month of April, the lake is around 2500 km2. During the wet season is grows to around 16000 km2. Even now you couldn’t see the far side. The tall post with the arrows on top in the photo shows the height at full capacity. At this time of year rice and other crops are grown on land that will later be totally submerged, so all the houses at the edge are on stilts in readiness.
Around 170 villages sit around the lake with anything from 2000 to 6000 inhabitants. So a huge proportion of the population depend on the lake for their livelihood. There are schools, churches, Police stations, mosques, everything all floating. From time to time the village will up anchor and move to another part of the lake. The large mass of tied sticks are tethering points. You see lines and lines of what appears to be a few floating sticks; these are shrimp traps which are harvested bu women with big nets. They scoop out the twigs, shake off the shrimps and put the twigs back for next time. The crocodiles are all alive and are farmed by the villagers to produce fresh meat, jerky and produce leatherware for sale.
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