Sprung from the water

30 Jan, 2010
By Graham Simmons
Source: The Star

Living in a place surrounded by water is not just for the Venetians, as these five water settlements around the world show.

The “water city” of Venice, now with a fast-shrinking population due to rising water levels and the impact of mega-tourism, is famous worldwide. But other lesser-known water villages are equally fascinating.

Here’s a look at five water settlements, each with unique features:

Kampong Ayer, Brunei

After visiting Brunei’s renowned Kampong Ayer water village a couple of times, I now understand why people choose to live there. In brief, getting to Kampong Ayer is an adventure in itself.

The “flying coffins”, the speedboats that ferry people to and fro, are all driven by speed-freaks who turn a mundane trip into an adrenaline-charged dice with death.

Kampong Ayer, the world’s largest water-based settlement, dates back more than 1,000 years.

“Flying coffins” are the only way to get around Kampong Ayer in Brunei.

Its population has waxed and waned over the years, according to what style of housing is currently in vogue. But despite sporadic attempts to move the river dwellers to safer but less picturesque housing on land, Kampong Ayer has thrived right up to the present day.

The recorded history of Kampong Ayer, and Brunei as a whole, goes back 1,500 years or more. In the 14th century, the Borneo prince Awang Alak Betatar converted to Islam and changed his name to Sultan Muhammad Shah. The current ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, is a direct descendant of this lineage.

In 1521, the explorer Antonio Pigafetta stopped at the port of Muara and then travelled along the Brunei River to what is today Bandar Seri Begawan. From around this time, Kampong Ayer had been called the “Venice of the East”. The two places don’t exactly compare, but somehow the title has stuck.

At the time of Pigafetta’s visit, Brunei was at the peak of its power and influence. Brunei’s territory extended from the south of the island of Borneo as far north as the Philippines. Pigafetta described Kampong Ayer as “a city entirely built in saltwater, and containing 25,000 families”.

In the 1970s, there was a concerted attempt by the government to entice the inhabitants of Kampong Ayer to move onto dry land, but to no avail. The government was forced to reverse its stand, building instead facilities and upgrading water, electricity and sewerage services.

With the construction of schools, clinics, mosques and shopping facilities, Kampong Ayer now has all the hallmarks of a self-contained community. Today it is home to over 30,000 people, and continues to grow. Those who do move out of Kampong Ayer can be assured of accommodation in some of Asia’s classiest apartments.

Sadly, my visit to Kampong Ayer was at an end. It was time to board another “flying coffin”, for the trip back to shore.

I was looking forward to the exhilarating but our driver proceeded at a speed that was almost obscenely sedate. Maybe the death-cheating attitude that has always inspired the residents of Kampong Ayer is now a little passé. Or maybe this is just another symptom of the maturing of the water village into a respectable water town.

Chong Khneas, Lake Tonlé Sap, Cambodia

One of the smaller houseboats of Chong Khneas.

They are like immigrants anywhere. The mainly Vietnamese inhabitants of Chong Khneas, a unique floating village in Cambodia’s Lake Tonlé Sap, have to struggle just to survive. And their task is made more difficult by the extraordinary seasonal changes in one of Asia’s biggest lakes.

The area of Lake Tonlé Sap increases at least fourfold in the wet season, its depth rising by more than 8m. Then, during the dry season, the 1,100 families have to move several kilometres out towards the centre of the lake, taking with them all their amenities, including a floating school, fish processing factories, floating churches and mosques, and even a floating basketball court. This doesn’t exactly make life easy.

Chong Khneas is just one of around 170 floating villages in Lake Tonlé Sap. It’s also the easiest to get to from Phnom Penh, which accounts for its popularity as a day-trip escape from Siem Reap. In the wet season, Chong Khneas is about 11km from Siem Reap via Highway 63; the distance increases to anything between 12km and 15km in the dry season.

A palatial two-storey stilt mansion in Lake Tonle Sap. — GRAHAM SIMMONS

We set out on a boat cruise of Chong Khneas, picking a modest-looking covered boat parked at a floating jetty. A cruise of around 60-90 minutes costs US$11 (RM38) for a small boat (holding up to ten people) or US$22 for a larger boat. Individual passengers may be charged up to US$10 a head.

Fishing is the main source of livelihood, and it’s uncanny to see a full-scale fish processing production line out in the lake. Some of the fish caught are tiny riel, used to make the Vietnamese fish sauce nuoc nam. The villagers even have a crocodile farm, where baby crocs are raised in pretty miserable conditions to maturity, then skinned for the export market.

With Chong Kneas now seeing so many day-trippers, a few tour operators are offering trips to other floating villages.

The province of Kompong Chhnang has a couple of floating villages — Phoum Kandal and Chong Kos — not far from the town of Kompong Chhnang, while Pursat province boasts the biggest ethnic Vietnamese village of them all — Kompong Luong, complete with cafés, shops and even an ice-making plant.

Nearer to Siem Reap, the villages of Kampong Phluk and the much larger Kampong Khleang are easily accessible by public transport along Route 6, via the villages of Roluos and Domdek respectively. It’s surprising that no-one has yet come up with the idea of a floating hotel. This would enable an extended stay including trips to outlying floating villages.

Maybe that’s a project for an enterprising reader.

Buli Sim-Sim Water Village, Sandakan, Malaysia

See how fresh the fish is in Sandakan’s fish market.

It’s hard, at first glance, to imagine that Sandakan was once the capital of British North Borneo (now Sabah). A ramshackle jumble of rusting corrugated-iron huts overlooking the Sulu Sea, this gateway town of some 350,000 people is right now in the throes of redevelopment.

Its formal declaration as a city in 2008 is expected to put Sandakan firmly back on the map.

Long before the arrival of the British, Sandakan was a trading port of the Sultanate of Sulu, based in the south of the Philippines. Then, after more than 90% of its buildings were razed by the Japanese during WWII, the Brits moved the capital to Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu), on the north-east coast of Sabah.

Sandakan was rebuilt, more or less, and then left to rot in the steamy equatorial heat for the next 50 years or so.

In Sandakan town, public spaces are undergoing a clean-up. A new fish market graces the waterfront, selling super-fresh tuna, red snapper, grouper, mackerel, rayfish, mangrove crabs and tiger prawns. But the most atmospheric part is undoubtedly the Buli Sim-Sim Water Village.

Buli Sim-Sim is a little smaller than Brunei’s water village, but is just as colourful.

It consists of three sections — the original Malay section dating from 1879; the “new” Malay section established in the 1970s to provide cheap housing (neat and colourful rental houses go from as little as RM51 a month; and the Chinese section.

My guide was Irix Orlando, whose family came originally from the southern Philippines. He showed me the street-art painted houses, including the elaborate open-house of shipping magnate Wong Tin Yan. Wong could easily afford a mansion on the mainland, but is content to stay here, where he goes fishing and mends nets in his spare time.

“Why would I give up all this?” he said, pointing in a wide arc out to sea.

We visited the old Malay section, usually off-limits to visitors. And understandably so! The boardwalk timbers were rotting; rubbish was heaped up in large piles by the shoreline; and it would appear that paint is unknown in this part of town. But when I most undiplomatically voiced my opinions, Irix chimed in:

“I was born and grew up in the old Malay section,” he said. “There’s a real feeling of community here. And kids are taught how to stay safe on the gangways even before they can walk.”

Sandakan is also the gateway to the rainforest wonders of southeast Sabah, best accessed by speedboat along the Kinabatangan River. Several monkey species including orang-utans live along the Menanggul River (a tributary of the Kinabatangan), and some visitors are even lucky enough to spot the rare Borneo Pygmy Elephant.

Among the monkeys is one of the most bizarre-looking creatures ever to come out of the jungle: the Proboscis monkey, with its huge, bulbous nose, giant belly and long white tail.

But the forests of Sabah are severely under threat. Demand for palm-oil has seen vast swathes of rainforest cleared. The time to see Sandakan and the nature wonders of Sabah’s southeast is NOW.

Floating villages of Blackwater Lakes, Papua New Guinea

The Sepik River of Papua New Guinea is gateway to one of the world’s great wilderness areas. The lakes and rivers teem with fierce crocodiles, and the grassy riverbanks conceal poisonous snakes such as the aptly-named Death Adder.

A quiet village on a tributary of the Sepik River.

Some distance from the Sepik, but connected to it by a network of picturesque tributaries, the Blackwater Lakes get their name from the colour of their waters, which range from charcoal-grey in the shallows to pitch black in its depths.

The hue is caused by decaying plants, whose tannin stains the water. Partly to avoid dangers from venomous snakes, many local villagers choose to live on floating islands in the middle of the lakes.

To view these spectacular lakes and meet some of their inhabitants, we set out from the Sepik, branching right onto the Korosameri River just after the village of Mindimbit. Past Mameri village, we veered left onto a narrow channel that snakes its way through the jungle and grasslands. Eventually, we found ourselves in a vast lake — one of the Blackwater Lakes, which on this moonless night reflected not even the feeblest ray of light.

The night was darker than black. For hours, we drifted, trying to find bearings. But to no avail. Then finally, a blinding apparition appeared on the horizon, like the little blob of white contained within the total black in a Yin-Yang diagram. The apparition took the form of a tall lady totally clad in white, standing up in a dugout canoe. I was able to make out other members of a group of about half a dozen next to her.

But what on earth were they doing out on the lake at this hour of night?

As it turned out, they were island dwellers, living on a floating island in the lake. They’re on their way home from a meeting on the mainland. Next morning, we were able to see their island home — a thatch-roofed cottage surrounded by gardens, a chicken coop and coconut palms swaying in the breeze.

Sounds like a pretty idyllic life, except for the isolation. And other, larger villages of the Blackwater Lakes are also more than just-habitable. On a promontory jutting out into the main lake, the village of Kaningara is home to about 500 residents.

On a hilltop stands a new Catholic church, incorporating totem masks and “spirit poles”. The church has been tolerant, making no attempt to interfere with “the old ways” while providing important services like schooling and healthcare.

The villagers have responded in kind, allowing the newcomers to find a harmonious place alongside their tradition of spirit worship. But what will be the future for these lake dwellers with global warming and rising water levels? Only time will tell.