Floating in Kampong Chanang

Its quite funny but proving to be oh so true in our travels. The places you never planned to go to, or those that you never wanted to visit - often turn out to be the more colourful experiences. Kampong Chanang was just one of those times!

At first sight the town offers very little to a westerner and traveller. We were, yet again, accosted by tuk-tuk drivers at the bus stop and quickly whisked off to the nearest hotel with hot water (I'm sure you'll see a theme develop here). Well the 2 hotels in town were both fully booked for the night and we ended up in a small, grotty gusthouse - with cold water, bugs, screaming children running the varandah, loud tennants, buses and trucks roaring past the front door (as if to be in your room), another low bathroom entrance (for Si to bang his head on again!) and a beast of unknown genetics that crowed/ growled/ squawked outside the bedroom window all night! Oh yes.... we had scored a room in HELL!

However, our experience at the floating Vietnamese Village swept the previous sleepless nights pain all away. Its difficult to find the right words to describe the scene - and we wish we had the technology to upload many of the photo's we took. Let's try to explain....

We hired an ore boat (oared by a lovely Vietnamese/ Cambodian woman) for $3 and for the next hour she stroked the wooden canoe effortlesly through a village made entirely of floating houses, riverboats and barges. Everything was floating on the river - houses, mechanics, barbers, seemstresses, pig pens and every other necessity to village life. Villagers slept in hammocks, children smiled through windowless frames and jumped into the water, fishermen appeared from the rivers depths and people paddled their way to and from their daily activities. It was simply awesome and something neither of us had ever experienced. The peace and tranquility of the canoe moving through the water-fille streets and alleys. To behold such a spectacle was truely amazing and yet another moment of gratitude was felt by us both.

And that was not to be the only memorable and treasured moment of Kampong Chanang either. As mentioned earlier, Kampong Chinang offers very little to a westerner and traveller and there were very, very few other fellow travellers seen around town and the markets. Yet despite this a wonderful Cambodian woman pulled up alongside us at the markets, wound down here window and wished us (in English) a very Merry Christmas. How heart warming that was! How totally unexpected and seemingly out-of-place! How fantastic! How Kampong Chinang - full of unknown surprises!