Skip links

Skip to Content
play

Live

Navigation menu

  • News
    • Middle East
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • US & Canada
    • Latin America
    • Europe
    • Asia Pacific
  • Ukraine war
  • Features
  • Economy
  • Opinion
  • Video
    • Coronavirus
    • Climate Crisis
    • Investigations
    • Interactives
    • In Pictures
    • Science & Technology
    • Sports
    • Podcasts
play

Live

In Pictures

Gallery|Poverty and Development

In Pictures: Cambodia’s floating villages

Most ethnic Vietnamese cannot buy land so they live in floating villages in Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest lake.

Southeast Asia(***)s largest freshwater lake, Tonle Sap, is home to most of the ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia.
By Vincenzo Floramo and Laura Villadiego
Published On 10 Aug 201410 Aug 2014
facebooktwitterwhatsapp

Tonle Sap, Cambodia – All that 61-year-old Thou Yien Son owns floats on water. His house is a precarious wooden platform tied to a bamboo raft and his income comes from a boat that he uses to catch fish and bring it to the local market. Yien Son doesn’t have anything else, not even Cambodian citizenship. He is one of the 700,000 ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia, a country that doesn’t consider them as citizens even though they’ve lived in the country for generations.

Most of the ethnic Vietnamese arrived in Cambodia during the French Protectorate (1863- 1953) to work in administration positions and in the countryside. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took power and the Vietnamese were forcibly deported to Vietnam or killed. During the exile, most of them lost the papers that proved their Cambodian origin. On their return in the 1980s, they were considered migrants and became stateless.

Without papers, ethnic Vietnamese cannot buy land and most of them live in floating villages in Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, located deep inside Cambodia. Yien Son, told Al Jazeera: “I came back because my grandparents and my parents were born and died here. This is my land.”

But there is one hope for the ethnic Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge Tribunal opened a new case against the top leaders of the regime, that will judge, among other crimes, the genocide committed against the Vietnamese community, which ethnic Vietnamese civil society leaders hope to use to gain repatriation. This same tribunal just condemned Nuon Chea, the second most senior leader in the Khmer Rouge, and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, to life in prison for crimes against humanity.

Young children in the village often wear life jackets to avoid drowning. Many ethnic Vietnamese living in floating villages have drowned because they cannot swim.
Advertisement
Without papers, ethnic Vietnamese cannot find jobs on the mainland and many of them face unemployment.
Small boats are the primary method of transportation in the floating villages. Children use large tubs to cover short distances between houses.
About 180 students attend this private floating school where they learn basic writing and reading skills in Khmer and Vietnamese. Most of them leave the school after one year to start helping their fathers with fishing.
Villagers normally work from dawn to late night, but they often rest during the hottest hours of the day.
Families in the Vietnamese floating villages normally consist of four or five members. Different generations of the same family often live next to each other.
Advertisement
Thou Yien Son, 61, was born in Kompong Thom, a village in Cambodia. He was deported by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, but when he came back in 1983 he was not allowed to buy a house so he moved to the water.
Yim My was born two months ago in a floating house, where her mother only had the assistance of a local midwife during delivery. The family said that they cannot afford to pay the small fee required to register the infant.
Tonle Sap suffers from widespread contamination and water pollution, which has brought disease to the local population.
Most of the houses in Phum Kandal are wooden platforms floating on bamboo rafts. They usually consist of two small rooms, a kitchen, and a latrine that opens directly into the water.
Houses are usually connected to a precarious grid hanging on thin sticks a few metres over the water. Some of them have small batteries to run the front-door light.
Most of the villagers make a living from fishing. Fish are grown in controlled ponds for several months, then are caught and prepared for sale in mainland markets.
In Phum Kandal, there are no shops, only small boats that sell fresh vegetables, bread, cooked food, sweets, and medicine.


    • About Us
    • Code of Ethics
    • Terms and Conditions
    • EU/EEA Regulatory Notice
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Cookie Preferences
    • Sitemap
    • Community Guidelines
    • Work for us
    • HR Quality
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise with us
    • Apps
    • Channel Finder
    • TV Schedule
    • Podcasts
    • Submit a Tip
    • Al Jazeera Arabic
    • Al Jazeera English
    • Al Jazeera Investigative Unit
    • Al Jazeera Mubasher
    • Al Jazeera Documentary
    • Al Jazeera Balkans
    • AJ+
    • Al Jazeera Centre for Studies
    • Al Jazeera Media Institute
    • Learn Arabic
    • Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights
    • Al Jazeera Forum
    • Al Jazeera Hotel Partners

Follow Al Jazeera English:

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • youtube
  • instagram-colored-outline
  • rss
Al Jazeera Media Network logo
© 2023 Al Jazeera Media Network