LTO Cambodia: Siem Reap Flooding

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Siem Reap Flooding - Trip Report

As most know by now, there has been flooding across the Cambodia and the region for almost two weeks, including in Siem Reap town. I drove from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap day before yesterday (Sunday) - the usual route up 6A to Skun, then National Route 6 through Kampong Thom and on to Siem Reap. The road was mostly clear of flooding save a couple of short stretches with a few inches of water across the road that were easily passable. The countryside to either side of the road was flooded to the horizon in many places, especially along 6A south of Skun and also near Kampong Thom City. The water was right up to the road's edge for much of the trip and just a little bit of rain would likely put it over the top. All of the rivers and streams (that could be distinguished from the flooded countryside) were full to the brim and moving fast and hard. Animals - cows and water buffaloes mostly - lined the sides of the road in several areas, driven out of the fields and to the high ground by the flooding.

Siem Reap town has experienced varying levels of flooding for better than a week, the worst of it toward the south end of town. When we arrived on Sunday it hadn't rained in Siem Reap for more than 24 hours and the flooding had reportedly stabilized and even retreated a bit. I'm staying at the north end of town where the flooding is minimal at the moment. Tuk-tuks and motodups were reluctant to try to cross from this side of town to the Old Market area, claiming that there was a 50-50 chance of the engine flooding out in the deeper sections along the way, so I decided to walk over to the Old Market in the early afternoon, about 8 hours ago. The following are some of the photos I took along the way. (Turns out that wading 2-3 kilometers through ankle to knee-deep water is surprisingly good exercise. Suffering some sore leg muscles tonight as a result.)

As mentioned above, the weather has been mostly dry in Siem Reap for at least 48 hours. Yesterday (it is now just after midnight) was sunny and pleasant in the morning with only a brief rain in the afternoon. The waters are receding from town at the moment, quite visibly so in the later evening.

All of the following were taken with a 17mm-55mm lens (Nikon D5100.) If it looks like I was standing in thigh deep water to get the shot, I was.

2 Thnou Street (Old Market Street)

Old Market

2 Thnou Street (Old Market Street) near Sivutha Blvd.

Pub Street

Water play at the intersection of Sivutha Blvd and Phnom Krom Road just south of the Old Market

Siem Reap Provincial Hospital

Tep Vong Street

Intersection of Sivutha Blvd. and Tep Vong Street

Tuk-tuk

Bow wave on Sivutha Blvd.

Snack vendors next to the river near the Old Market

Makeshift boat

Sivutha Blvd.

Many businesses have lined sandbags against the flooding.

2 comments:

Simon OliverSeptember 27, 2011 at 10:27 AM
It just looks horrendous.

Kampot seems have been spared this year.
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AnonymousSeptember 27, 2011 at 9:52 PM
It's not too bad if you don't mind swimming to a pub for a beer!
We are there now having a great time, sure it's a little wet but as we like to say everytime something goes wrong........ It's an adventure!
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Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.