cat-fish for lunch

Trivia about Siem Reap: it's name literally means "Siamese Defeated". It's a bit boastful really, since then the Thais have been far more dominant than the Cambodians. Thailand even controlled Siem Reap for a hundred or so years until the French took it off them.

Anyway, near Siem Reap there is a small village called Chong Kneas. The village is made of houses on stilts and boats. During the dry season, half the village has to move in to the middle of Lake Tonlé Sap as the lake dries up and drops as much as 8 meters in depth. This is actually quite useful to the villagers as the exposed land can then be used to grow rice. In addition to floating houses, the town also has floating churches, schools, businesses and even a floating basketball court!

The lake provides one of the worlds largest fresh-water fish catches, but the unfortunate downside to this is the size of the fish being caught is dropping. Cat-fish used to be around 6kg, but now it's rare to catch anything over 1.5kg out of the lake. Working around this the locals have started fish farming. We went to one of the farms and were able to have a freshly caught (and killed) 3.5kg cat-fish for lunch. Yum!
I like the Cambodians attitude to food - if it's edible, then eat it. Frogs, beatles, crickets, spiders, and crocodiles are all on the menu somewhere in the country. The fish farm also farmed crocodiles. These were out of our price range though. A full crocodile sets you back around $400.
Yup, you can even buy snakes for eating at your convenience on the lake.