Obviously Siem Reap is associated with the famous Angkor temples. This is the natural base for all visitors wishing to spend from 1 to 3 days visiting this archeological complex. But what if after 2 days of temple touring (I’d rather say “tuk-tukking”) all those wonderful structures seem to be less and less exciting?

Our planning has considered this possibility of being over exposed to the Khmers’ sense of construction so the last day’s highlight was a visit to the floating village of Kampong Khleang.

There are several floating villages at Tonle Sap lake. Of course the closest to Siem Reap are the most popular with the leading Kampong Phluk. I must admit that having read a heavy bunch of blogs describing the Armageddon of this place we decided to visit the village located 1.5h tuk-tuk drive from Siem Reap: Kampong Khleang. And that was a great time.

We were in Cambodia beginning of April which means the end of the dry season. For floating village experience this is not the best time. Most of the stories relate to visits at the beginning of dry season when the water level is much higher. What does that mean in practice?

The concept of the floating village is based on building the settlements along the river and on the lake itself. The regular visit of any floating village consists of a boat tour. This is more or less like sailing the main village “road”. When the water level is low it means that in Kampong Khleang you can enjoy something like 3 kilometers driving more into the village up to the boat boarding place. This is not at all bad thing.

First of all you have a unique possibility to take the walk along normal (I mean not water) roads and explore the village. Normally, this is all under water and would only be accessible by boat. You can imagine that when looking at the height of stilts.

Next, the boat trip takes around 2 hours. That is pretty enough and there is no sense to sail additional 3km more. The river is very muddy so every time the boats pass by they need to reduce speed. Otherwise everybody would look like a muddyman.

By the way Kampong Khleang is the biggest from all floating village at Tonle Sap. It is really huge: there are shops, temples, school etc. Contrary to other villages it is less dependent on tourist traffic and people are busy with their daily business.

Last thing is that April is one of the hottest month and is not a peak season. Literally we were the only visitors to this village at that time and had the boat only for ourselves.

Kampong Khleang as opposite to the most popular Kampong Phluk is by far the less visited place. Not only in low season. During our visit we have never experienced any aggressive direct selling practices. Contrary, we met local people busy with their daily work and many times received open smile, interested gazes or a hand wave. Don’t even dream about this in Kampong Phluk!

Yes, we had a surprise there. Once. When buying tickets to the boat tour we have been naive enough to expect some positive effect of our negotiation skills (we were the only visitors, there were a number of vacant boats waiting, there was a low season etc). No way: 25USD per person was fixed. On the other hand would you be eager to decrease the price seeing 2 desperate tourists who spent almost 2 hours driving there to take the boat trip?

A practical information: you need to buy a 3 day ticket to visit the Angkor Park for 2 days (62USD). The last day go early to visit Banteay Srei (a beautiful pink temple, 40 minutes drive from Siem Reap – you can read more on this here). Then 1.5h drive to Kampong Khleang with no necessity to go via Siem Reap.

As added value you get an opportunity to see the countryside and experience the dynamic traffic on Cambodian roads. You are back around 3pm so still some time to take a look at Siem Reap itself. The tuk-tuk cost is 30USD for this daily tour.

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