A Certain Sinking Feeling...

We did a post a while back about road transport here; now it's time to take to the water. Until a few years ago, the only way to get between many of the towns was by boat and a lot of the general traffic still goes this way. There are also still passenger ferries that run up and down the Mekong and the Tonle Sap but nowadays they're not too frequent. Or too new. This picture was taken at Kampong Cham of one getting a few running repairs.

Always fills you full of confidence, watching them do repairs right on the waterline with apparently nothing more than cigarette butts and a hammer. I had hoped to show a picture of an even older one that had been beached on the bank but unfortunately it got washed away by a flood.

Not all of the vessels look so decrepit. The one below looked gorgeous, with its wood gleaming gold in the sun and reflecting in the blue of the river. You can actually tell the season by the colour of the water of the Mekong: in the dry season, it's blue and in the rainy season it's rich brown from all the run-off (you can see the difference in the photos). But it's always incredibly powerful; the currents can run at anything up to 10 km/hr (or even more at the peak of the wet season).

Many of the boats on the river, however, look like nothing quite so much as animated garden sheds.

Or, in this particular case, a garden shed that's come off its wheels (look on the foredeck...).

Wood does, of course, have one advantage when it comes to boat building: it floats. Metal, on the other hand, doesn't. Not sure that message has entirely got through yet.

Spot the waterline. When I first saw boats loaded like this I thought it amazing that they didn't sink. However, that was before talking to one of my colleagues about it. Apparently they do. Quite often, surprisingly. Or not, depending on your understanding of Archimedes' Principle and your use of the word surprising.

Below is a 'before' picture: as in, before they load it. Quite possibly with all of the scaffolding you can see. And all the other building materials. The most interesting thing about this picture is that the scaffolding is made of metal. Normally, there seems to be no limit to what you can do with bamboo and twine.

Balance is another interesting new-fangled concept that seems to be a bit slow catching on in some places. And it's not even loaded with anything much yet...

Staying with high-tech, in a previous existence, one of my pet hates was when your flight lands on time and then spends about an hour on the tarmac waiting for the gate to be freed up because the aircraft on it has been delayed by yet another French/Spanish/Greek air traffic controllers' strike. This is the Cambodian equivalent: waiting for the other ferry to get clearance to push back from the muddy bank. Still, at least there won't be any unnecessary delays waiting for them to raise the bow ramp: they never bother to do that anyway.

And while we're on about airports, here's the local equivalent of long-term parking. On the other hand, see? Wood floats!

A fact not lost on the owners of the boat below.

Many Cambodians spend much of their lives on the water and they use boats much as others use cars. Here are some examples of typical Mekong river run-abouts.

The standard family vehicle.

The top-of-the-range family vehicle.

The local delivery van.

The level crossing.

The Number 51 bus.

And on this bus - a new version of the old college trick of seeing how many people you can get in a phone box. But using a leaky boat on one of the world's most powerful rivers. And, in this case, barangs (about 30 VSO livelihoods programme volunteers split between the two boats), who typically weigh about one and a half times more than Cambodians. Still, at least they don't normally carry any unnecessary weight like life jackets. In this case, though, as it was an official fact-finding field trip to one of the Mekong islands, they did. They made quite good cushions, as a matter of fact.

Actually, I'm forced to admit that the complete absence of the Health & Safety Nazis is one of the reasons I love Cambodia. The water is their home and they just get on with things.

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