Hope floats for water villages in Cambodia

Flotilla academia: Children rowing home from their floating school in Kampong Chhnang province, about 90km northeast of Phnom Penh. - AFP

CHHNORK TROU (Cambodia): Cambodia’s floating villages have adapted to the ebb and flow of South-East Asia’s largest lake for generations, but modernisation and a scarcity of fish are now threatening their traditional way of life.

Houses, schools, hairdressers and even dentists – entire communities bob around on the Tonle Sap, whose waters rise and fall dramatically with the seasons.