The old jungle logging road from Snoul to Senmonorom, built by the French and bombed by the Americans, was now being widened and improved by the Chinese, financed by the Japanese.  Winding through the jungle hills like a long sinuous red brown snake, the hot months produced clouds of hot choking dust. Vehicles jolted up the road trailed by a billowing dust cloud of biblical proportions which immediately enveloped the occasional passing truck in a blinding featureless sea of red dust.  This cleared only slowly to allow the jungle to swim back into view. The empty red road appears again cutting through the jungle pointing the way to inexorably to Senmonorom.        

Torrential rains turned the dust into a deep cloying porridge which gripped vehicles and men alike and brought travel to a treacherous, sliding, skidding impossibility.  For weeks the road was impassable and the inhabitants of Senmonorom relied on their own resources.

Now broader, less undulating and infinitely smoother the old jungle road has become a highway.  Instead of slithering through the jungle along the natural contours, watched by shy deer, it slashes through the undergrowth vaulting mountain streams, bridging creeks and spanning crevices. They gave it a number – 76.

Senmonorom though is no idyllic sluggish backwater. It has been at the forefront of some of the darkest episodes of modern world history. The long dirt airstrip was built by the French early last century and maintained right up to the mid 1950s. It was then that the French were defeated by the Vietnamese in Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Close to the border with Vietnam the jungle paths here pulsated with troops and supplies trudging from the north to supply the Vietcong guerrillas in South Vietnam in the 1960s. Even today the lines of bomb craters from American B52 air strikes still march across the landscape.  The unexploded ordnance from these days seriously slowed down the current re-development of the road.

Following Maoist ideology the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s identified the subsistence agricultural lifestyle of the indigenous peoples of this area as a viable social model. So people from here were dragooned into the Khmer Rouge and participated in the genocide which emptied the towns and cities and killed two million doctors, managers, teachers, lawyers and anyone else with a vestige of education.

Today this beautiful region totters on the edge of economic sustainability and the new road will certainly open up the area to trade with the rest of Cambodia and the nearby markets of Vietnam. Tourists are already finding their way into this remote region. Apart from spectacular jungle waterfalls visitors enjoy extreme elephant treks down impossibly steep jungle trails on the backs of the logging elephants. The growth in prosperity is already clearly visible with more businesses, shops, hotels and restaurants springing up every day.  

Pictures

Where we were:

The wide brown Tonle Sap River seemed alive with fish. Millions upon millions of small white fish were migrating down the river from the great lake and then up the Mekong toward Laos.  For some reason this mass migration is triggered by the full moon and for four months around December the rivers seethed with fish on the two or three days around the full moon.

This annual phenomenon is well known here and vital to the people of Cambodia; so huge fixed nets are constructed in the Tonle Sap River near Phnom Penh. The mouth of each net is 25 metres square and held open by a bamboo frame. The fish simply swim into the net and down the 150 metre long net to the end, where there is a crane on a bamboo raft. On the raft this crane is used to lift the end net full of fish and empty it into waiting boats.

We watched under warm clear blue skies as the end nets bulging with half a tonne of silvery fish were lifted and emptied every ten minutes.  During the migration this rate of harvesting goes on day and night for five days at each of four full moon periods. What is incredible is that there were seven of these Dai fishing nets across the river. Upstream were another seven sets of nets and rafts and yet another seven down stream.  That will give you some idea of the tonnage of fish harvested at this time of year.  We’ve no idea why it is called Dai fishing, certainly nothing to do with a Welshman. 

The manager of the particular Dai fishing raft we were on had been working day and night for three days and was exhausted. The boats collecting the fish waited at the end of the raft and were called forward one at a time to be filled by jumping, flapping squirming fish. 
 
Fish in some form contributes about 70% of the protein needs of the people. So this huge harvest is essential. The problem is how to preserve all these fish for the rest of the year. Well, they are dried, smoked, boiled, salted, sweetened, pickled and of course made into Prahoc fish paste, which we’ve already described.  They are also processed into fish sauce and fish oil.  On the banks of the river fish were spread everywhere to dry in the hot sun.

Naturally this open net system catches everything. When the nets are emptied into the small boats the catch is sorted to separate the more valuable species from the migrating white fish. Occasionally even the huge 350 kg Mekong Catfish are caught but these are tagged and released as they are an endangered species.  Last year one was so badly injured it died and its body was handed over to the Fisheries Administration for study, have a look at the picture.

We are often asked if the fresh water fish are being over fished in Cambodia. Well last year there were record catches.  So there is no sign of fish stocks declining yet. Part of the credit for this are the actions being taken by the Fisheries Administration to preserve habitats and crack down on illegal fishing which captures the young fish. 

The biggest threats to Cambodia’s freshwater fisheries are the dams being built in China, Vietnam and Laos. If the water level of the Mekong is prevented from rising the waters will not flood into the Great Lake.  This will then reduce the number of fish spawning and the catch will inevitably decline.  This could be disastrous for the people of Cambodia unless other food sources are identified.

Pictures