Tonle Sap Lake

So what else can can you do @ Siem Reap?
You can visit Tonle Sap lake to see the floating village. Let me tell you, this lake is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia.  But I have to say this is an expensive trip, tho, this is a beautiful break from temples. 
Sadly to say, it ended with mixed emotions. 

Let me tell you why....
It was an eye opener trip at first. Very interesting to see a different lifestyle around floating village where people live on boat houses, to hear from the local people about their life and community, and what do they do for living. I learned from the young boatmen, he is learning 4 languages, English, Japanese, Korean and I can't remember one more. This is mainly because tourism is a good source of income to them. 

However, the 'not very nice' experience has yet to come.
We already paid US15 / per person for boat trip. The boat then bring us along the river to the "open water" as you can see in the first picture. Yes it is beautiful, yet, kind of scary too.. we stayed there for 1 minute before they take us back.

In my mind, I am prepared to see kids to come and beg for $$. As usual, I will ignore them. If you give to one, you have to give to another twenty kids. I'm sorry. I just can't do that.

On the way back, the boatmen asked us to buy things from a sundry shop and donate to the orphan school. In my mind, there it is... it is happening right in front of my eyes. Now I know how other tourist who gave bad reviews for this trip in 'tripadvisor' website felt. For small pack of rice, they charged us USD40! I even asked why is it so expensive. They explained 50% of the price goes to donation box for the village people. I don't know how true is that statement is. But I gave they benefit of the doubt.

I just keep quiet the whole journey back from the school. I'm sure there's a better way for us to help them then charging the tourist and extremely ridiculous donation. Can you a simple math, if one group of 4 'donate' USD20, how many tourist they have in a day, in a month, in a year? 


On top of that, the boatmen even ask for tip of USD5 per person. For him and the boat driver. 
In the end ,the total cost for this trip is USD30 per person excluding tuk tuk cost to get there. This boat ride will only take 1 hour to 1.5 hours the most. 


To me, I don't mind paying for the experience but I don't like the 'forcing' style. Why do they need to rip off the tourist pocket? I feed bad for them. 


Just something to share.