[EN]
The Amazing Floating Village 'Kampong Pluck'
Hey guys. The reason I visited Siem Reap was for Angkor Wat tour, so I didn't research what else I can do in Cambodia except for Angkor Wat. After I got to Siem Reap I found out that there is a floating village.
Floating village in Cambodia is the place where the poor people built houses on the lake because they have no money to build houses on the land. When I heard that story I was thinking do I really want to go there? I felt like It's going to be painful to watch people living there. But people said it's really beautiful and just going there could help the community. So I decided to go there. There are few floating villages in Siem Reap, among them, I visited a place called 'Kampong Pluck'. I book the tour through the hotel, and we used tuk-tuk for transportation. For the tuk-tuk it was $15 for a whole day.
I don't really want to recommend you to take tuk-tuk to go to Kampong Pluck because it was really hard for me. All the roads are really bumpy and dusty and you have to drive quite a far distance from the town. I wear a white T-shirt and it was the biggest mistake because after the tour my t-shirt changed to brown because of the dirt.
When you get to the entrance of Kampong Pluck you gotta buy ticket first. When we asked the hotel reception they said the ticket price is $15 but when we got there they said $25. We asked why the price is different? They said we're not group tour you have to pay more. This is a really common scam in Cambodia. We already took tuk-tuk for about 40 mins to get here and there were a group of guys standing at the ticket booth asking money from us, so we didn't have a choice. To avoid this kind of scamming or arguing I recommend to book a group tour ahead.
After bought the ticket we had to drove a few more minutes to get to another booth which you meet your boat driver/tour guide. When we got there all the guides fighting each other to get our ticket, so... it was a little bit scary...haha.
Finally, we got on the boat and started our tour. Our tour guide showed us their school, police station, church etc.
For a few minutes, I couldn't say anything. It was just so amazing. There were a lot of flowers at each house, it looked beautiful and also made me really sad. My guide said tons of tourists visit Kampong Pluck but especially a lot of Korean people donating money to their community regularly. So he could've finished school because of that donation. He also said I have to appreciate to Korean people rest of my life. I was touched what he said to me and, and I also really appreciate to those Korean people who are helping other people all over the world.