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Kampong Khleang

Portraits from the Cambodian Great Lake

By Stories She Saw

January 28^th, 2019

In early January 2019, I spent several days in the small fishing village of Kampong Khleang, which sits on the banks of the Tonle Sap river. Appointed an UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1997, the Tonle Sap river flows southwest for six months of the year into the Mekong, and northeast for the remaining six months into the Tonle Sap Lake, due to its low elevation and the impact of monsoonal rains. As the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, it provides livelihood through fishing and land cultivation to over 1.2M Cambodians.

I visited Kampong Khleang during the dry season, as the flood waters receded to reveal a dustbowl full of activity and community. All houses in the village are built on 4m stilts so they remain above the monsoonal floodwaters, and essentially the town becomes a 'floating' village during the wet.

There is immense beauty in the houses: constructed by hand and adorned with licks of paint, blooming flowers and Cambodian People's Party banners. During the dry months, homemade fishing nets and traps hang in the shadows, along with clothes drying in the sun and boats, bikes and motorbikes resting; ready for their next use. Firewood is collected and stored for cooking purposes, while itinerant dogs - surviving on a diet of fish offcuts - guard the steps where they hope to receive their next meal.

Throughout the village, drying fishing nets line roads, covered in barnacles and full of holes, while shrimp, eels and fish bake in the sun. Popup shops, constructed for the dry season, sell chips, green mangoes and sugar syrup in fluorescent colours, and double as childcare, pubs and gossip centres. Incredible sunrises and sunsets along the river almost make you forget the rubbish that litters the landscape - an influence of western consumerism on people who have neither the means nor money to dispose of the consequences.

When I travel, I travel slowly, and Kampong Khleang was the perfect illustration as to why. I know seldom little Khmer - hello, how are you, what is your name, may I take your photo, my name is Jess, delicious, beautiful, thank you, goodbye - but walking the dusty streets, I saw suspicion erode as I attempted to converse with the faces that peered at me.

Kampong Khleang is not really on the tourist route: about five travellers a day discover the village and spend an hour or so there before leaving behind a duststorm as their air-conditioned ride pulls past the pagoda and into the distance. With limited electricity and no televisions or internet, I am not surprised that this fly-in-fly-out visit frustrates the locals. And while I don't confess to being any different, I noticed that by my third day in the village, I was offered, and accepted, rides and food from locals who began to smile as I walked past and yelled hello. Few people declined my broken-Khmer request for a photograph and I made sure to show any photos that I took to the models, who would generally laugh and demand that I take more.

Each of these photos captures a smile, but also a conversation; a moment; a memory. Each of them comes with a backstory about our interaction and an insight into their life. Those stories will have to wait, though, for telling another time.

Footnotes

All photos taken by me, on my Olympus OMD EM10ii

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FootNotes

All photos taken by me, on my Olympus OMD EM10ii