We decided to get to Cambodia from Saigon by travelling the Mekong River, the largest river body in Southeast Asia stretching from Tibet in the north down to its delta in south Vietnam.
We started at Chau Doc and visited the centuries old floating market. Farmers from this region still bring their goods, fruits and vegetables and sell them to local dealers using boats:
If you look closely, you can see samples strung up on poles that show what they're selling. Also, along the banks, there are floating houses, many doubling as 'fish farms':
It's called fish farming and it's big business here. It started about 30 years ago- farming fish under a floating house by using fish nets secured underneath. The first season had good results so other boating families then learnt how to farm fish. Gradually more and more floating houses were built each year with steel nets completely underneath the diameters of the house.
Our guide showed how they feed the fish. There are thousands and thousands of fish underneath and when the food is dropped the fish go into a frenzy:
The business here has reached $17 billion per year representing 13% of the worldwide market.
Travelling the Mekong looked quite idyllic and I took picture after picture as the scenery was awesome:
But you also see a very primitive and hard life for the people living by the river or on the boats. When you think how whole families live, some with only about 3 metres of space, it's really a basic existence.
And now we come to the marvels of Cambodia!
No comments:
Post a Comment