Tonle Sap Lake

Tonle Sap lake: For those which like a deep discovery of a country, the road of the lake, as well as a ballade in boat with the meeting of the villages of sins floating, are visits impossible to circumvent as well as the temples. It is one of the places or one is with the more meadows of the Kampuchean everyday life and their reality. Here, all the life proceeds around water. Very full of fish, paradise of the sinners, it shelters lake villages since the night of times. Most of the goods arrive by the lake and it is the lung of Siem Reap, because the main roads to join the other cities are in too bad condition. It is the largest lake of Kampuchea and its “feeder mother”.

The Tonle Sap remains relatively small for most of the year, measuring about a meter in depth and covering around 2,700 square kilometers.

However, the river that connects to the lake starts to swell during the monsoon season as water that flows from the Mekong river reverses, helping to expand the Tonle Sap up to 16,000 square kilometers with a depth up to 9 metres deep.

Surrounding fields become flooded with the floodplains acting as the core breeding ground for the Tonle Sap’s plentiful supply of fish.

The seasonal flow from lake and river are responsible for creating more than 75% of Cambodia’s fresh water fish catch and are estimated to directly support more than 3 million people.

The Tonle Sap is also home to many ethnic Vietnamese who have emigrated to Cambodia over the last 50 to 100 years, often to the consternation of the native Cambodian population.

Despite the local ethnic tensions the Vietnamese Floating Village on the Tonle Sap in Siem Reap has become one of the areas more popular attractions with tourists touring the area on boats.
For three days each year the Tonle Sap in Phnom Penh is home to Cambodia’s most famous sporting event.

The Water Festival is held to celebrate the reversal of the waters back into the Mekong and normally takes place in October or November.

Millions of people travel from the provinces to Phnom Penh so they can participate and watch the boat racing.

Teams from every province and many villages compete against each other in canoe style boats that they make themselves and decorate to represent their homeland.

During the first two days the boats race in pairs but on the third day all the boats join together for a mass race.

The festival and the boat racing is all done in order to pay respect to the river god who in turn will provide the country with a plentiful bounty of fish and rice for the rest of the year.

During the week of the festival the entire country stops working and Phnom Penh fills up beyond capacity with people sleeping in the streets and cars unable to drive anywhere near the river.

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Attractions Videos Cambodia, Lake, Siem Reap, Tonle Sap