(This is not a Travel Blog. You won’t get any travel advice, driving tips, food guide in this blog. Watching the news, I simply remembered. And felt compelled to write this piece for those who have shown me kindness and impressed me with their dignity as a people, no matter the circumstances.)
Flood water rising at the Lake. So many lives lost. My heart goes out to you, kind people from Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Ton Le Sap Lake.
The same typhoon ravaged our country and took property and lives along its path. Nature on a warpath. We stayed home, waiting for the storm to subside, glued to our TV screens. Watching, our hearts ached. We remember.
Children Rowing Home to Their Village
The kindness. The hospitality. Vanak, our tour guide. The boat men who took us along a cruise of the TonLe Sap Lake’s Floating Village. The lady who sold us all those shawls. The children playing with their dogs, as they hopped from board to board in that floating village. I even wonder about the crocodiles tended in that floating store cum restaurant. Did they escape from those cages as water rose? Or how about the ancient temples we climbed, or rather crawled up and down in Siem Reap? How we even managed to lose someone in our group when we visited Angkor Wat!
Water World, Cambodian style!
The Floating School Houses In Ton Le Sap lake
I dread to think what happened to them. To Vanak, our most efficient, kind and cheerful tour guide.
Residents of the Floating Village in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
I pray that they can rebuild their floating village.
God bless you, Vanak!
I wonder if the floating schoohouses cheerfully painted in white and blue are still there.
A Virtual WaterWorld!
The little children who have mastered the art of hopping from one floating house to the next. Effortlessly. Along with their dogs who’d hop along, just as cheerfully.
Till We Meet Again, People of Siem Reap!
The largest fresh water lake in Southeast Asia. And the largest freshwater floodplain, depending on the time of year. You see, Tonle Sap Lake dramatically floods and drains itself depending on the water flows which happen twice a year. I really hope they can all recover from this worst flooding in many years. God bless them. God bless us.
lifeisacelebration 
I’ll be going here on November and I hope the city and the people have recovered already, same with our own Isabala, Cagayan, Tarlac etc. The forces of nature keeps on battering us – hope we also pick up the slack to lessen its impact in the coming days. Still, I’m looking for my Siem Reap trip, been wanting to go there eversince.
You will like Siem Reap. They would have recovered by then. After all, the temples survived earthquakes, floods, wars. Take your time visiting the temples, other than Ta Phrom and Angkor Wat. They are worth more than a quick trip.
I missed Tonle Sap when I visited Cambodia. I heard the lake triples in size during the rainy season. It was summer when I was there. Probably much of the savanna I saw would be submerged in water later that year. That explained the houses on stilts in the middle of the arid land.
So I think this flood must be a deluge, considering that flooding is an annual event.