The lake stretched out ahead of us, a dark mirror patterned with green lily pads, completely undisturbed by the rest of the world. It was a Tuesday in early September, just twenty minutes from the temples, this is what Siem Reap local life actually looks like. The only sounds were a paddle cutting water and the occasional splash. No crowds, no tuk-tuks, no tour groups jostling for the same shot.
Beyond the Temples: Into Siem Reap Local Life
As with many of my favorite travel experiences, this morning on the water was made possible through a photo tour company I used multiple times during my time in Siem Reap: Angkor Travel Photography. Because they specialize in taking travelers beyond the obvious sights and into the living culture of Cambodia, I naturally gravitated towards them. The water lily harvest is an add-on to their “local life” tours, but is highly seasonal, entirely dependent on the rise and fall of the floodwaters. I happened to be incredibly fortunate with my timing, but they were not even sure if it would go forward until the evening beforehand!
My photographer-guide Remi, whom I had spent two other days shooting with, picked me up at my hotel at 5:30 AM and we ventured into the countryside. The sun had just risen by the time we arrived at Chreav Village; we navigated a muddy pathway (a slippery reminder that the monsoon season was still in full swing!) down to the edge of the lake.
A Different Kind of Harvest
We were greeted at the water’s edge by a local fisherman who had just returned from a different kind of pre-dawn lake harvest. His headlamp was still strapped to his forehead and he was squatting in the hull of his narrow wooden boat, surrounded by a floor filled with dark freshwater snails.
His hands sifted through the shells, which clinked together, as he used an old plastic jug that had been cut in half to create a makeshift scoop. He sorted them by size, throwing the smaller ones back into the lake to mature for another day’s harvest while dumping the larger ones into a woven sack.
Looking up past his boat, the towering, weathered pillars of the village’s stilt houses loomed over the muddy bank: a stark visual reminder of just how closely this community lives to the shifting water lines. In rural Cambodia, this lake is a literal life support system. These snails would either feed his family or be sold at the local morning market to sustain their daily livelihood.
But we weren’t here for the snails. Our destination lay further out on the open water, where the dark lake was blanketed by a dense carpet of vibrant pink flowers and floating green leaves. Just then, the fisherman’s wife (our subject of the morning’s photoshoot), stepped down the muddy bank to the edge of the water. She was wearing a colorful floral top and indicated to us that she was ready to start her harvest. She stepped into another long, narrow wooden boat, while Remi and I boarded a second vessel steered by a young local boatman.
And then we were off. Our two-boat convoy headed out into the vast, misty horizon.
Onto the Lake: The Water Lilies of Siem Reap
I learned her name was Tea and she was a 26-year-old wife and mother. There are only certain months when Tea, and other gatherers like her, are able to get out onto the lake and collect the all-important water lilies. By the time I met her in early September, the months of monsoon rains had filled the lake and created water levels high enough for the fields to bloom en masse and for boats to navigate the deep, flooded plains.
Tea paddled effortlessly ahead of us, leading the way like a vibrant pop of color gliding over the green lily pads which almost entirely covered the water’s surface. The sky had brightened completely now, revealing the colorful roofs of a village nestled at the base of a lush green hill rising sharply over the lake.
We arrived at the area she would be focusing on this morning, and she immediately got to work. Tea perched herself at the very edge of the bow, one knee tucked forward and the other behind her (a side-kneeling position that would literally cramp me up after a few minutes). But for her, it worked perfectly.
From this position, she could effortlessly lean way out over the water to begin picking the lilies, somehow without tipping the boat over (again, I could never!). At other times, she nimbly raised her long wooden paddle, dipping it into the lake to maneuver around while keeping the vessel perfectly steady.
The Rhythm of the Pick: Pull, Smack, Splash
Tea picked one flower at a time. She worked with a mesmerizing, practiced rhythm; I wondered if she found it as meditative as it seemed to me. Reaching into the water, she gripped the base of a single blossom and pulled upward in one sweeping motion.
As she pulled each lily out, I was shocked to see a thick, rubbery stem attached to the dainty flower. It seemed impossibly long, easily reaching several feet down into the flooded depths of the lake. She skillfully gathered the stems together, building a perfectly aligned, heavy bunch of vibrant pink flowers that grew larger with every pull.
From there, it was time to give those long stems a thorough wash. Holding the top of the bundle tightly together with her left hand, she used her right hand to vigorously smack the base of the stems against the water’s surface, repeatedly dunking them into the lake to shake loose the thick mud from the lakebed. She then scooped up handfuls of water, splashing it down the entire length of the vines until everything was shiny and clean.
Tea worked this way for almost an hour, paddling to different sections of the lake, picking and bundling the harvest until the boat held a very large bunch, a morning’s worth of labor I couldn’t yet put into context.
From Lake to Table: The Water Lily in Cambodian Cuisine
I learned later that in Cambodia, pink water lilies like the ones Tea had been picking all morning serve a purpose entirely separate from the lotus flowers I had encountered at temple offerings throughout Southeast Asia. These are a food crop. The long, flexible stems Tea was washing are a staple in Cambodian cuisine, frequently peeled, chopped, and tossed into traditional soups or added raw to salads for crunch.
While the blossoms themselves aren’t eaten, they are tightly bound to be sold at local markets, where they find new use as temple offerings or vibrant decorations. By gathering these lilies, Tea wasn’t just pulling flowers from a lake, she was harvesting the literal ingredients that feed the kitchens, markets, and spirits of her community.
Life on Stilts: Built for the Floods
Stepping off the boat and onto dry-ish ground, Tea walked down the muddy path while Remi and I followed closely behind. Looking around the architecture of the village, it was immediately clear that the structures were built to handle Cambodia’s dramatic seasons. The houses here were built high on wooden stilts, towering several feet off the ground. While they looked unique against the rural landscape, their design was born purely out of necessity.
During the peak of the monsoon season, the nearby Tonle Sap (the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia) swells to over four times its dry-season size. This massive expansion results in essentially swallowing the surrounding lowlands, turning dry roads and agricultural fields into a shallow, flooded matrix of canals. Thus, building elevated homes is the only way to ensure that families, their belongings, and even their motorbikes stay safely above the rising floodwaters.
As we walked, the sights and sounds of a rural morning were on full display: a rooster darted across the road, perching himself on a nearby house’s wooden railing. Off to my right, I saw a herd of water buffalo wading happily in a flooded rice field. This community, like so many others nearby, have beautifully adapted to the dramatic water tides, navigating a landscape that shifts entirely from cracked earth to open lake with the turn of the seasonal calendar.
Inside Tea’s Home: Prepping the Morning Harvest
Although I assumed we were simply walking back to our parked car, Tea led us right into the heart of her family’s home. This was my very first time seeing a traditional stilt home up close, and experiencing it from the ground up was eye-opening. I noticed a small wooden ladder which went up to a higher floor; Remi explained that this upstairs area served as the family’s bedroom and private living area.
But the area we stood in, beneath the second floor, wasn’t an enclosed room, but a fully functional, open-air living space shaded by the upper structure and supported by heavy wooden pillars. The ground was packed with dirt and the family chickens and roosters pecked and clucked freely around our feet.
Tea immediately climbed onto the smooth, raised wooden platform in the center of the space and got straight to work. Sitting in the same kneeling position she used out on the boat, she gathered a cluster of the long stems she had just harvested and used a small knife to deftly slice them into uniform, foot-and-a-half-long sections.
As I spun my head to take in the rest of the area, I noticed just how multi-functional this ground-floor space truly was. Just a few feet away sat the family kitchen, organized with neatly stacked metal pots and bright plastic washbasins. There was no refrigerator in sight, and while a standard stove wasn’t visible, a small, traditional charcoal burner likely handled the daily cooking.
Remi and I were clearly a novelty. Tea’s young son watched us from his hammock with quiet curiosity, while outside, a young boy had planted himself on a large white sack near the perimeter, studying us with the same steady, unimpressed gaze that only children can pull off. A mother carrying her baby walked slowly past the open edge of the space. Nobody said anything. They just watched.
A Gift of Pink Blossoms
Before we said our goodbyes and headed back to the car, Tea surprised me with an incredible gesture. She gathered up a massive, vibrant bouquet of the bright pink water lilies we had harvested together and handed them to me with a warm smile. Holding the chopped stems in my hands, the sheer scale of her daily labor suddenly felt so tangible.
Throughout the morning, I had watched those very flowers transform from a stunning natural landscape into a hard-earned crop that feeds, supports, and honors her community. For her to gift me a part of her possible earnings was an extremely generous offer I won’t soon forget.
The entire morning was a deeply authentic snapshot of rural Cambodian life, from the beautiful, meditative job of picking lily flowers out on the open lake to witnessing the humble design of a Cambodian family’s stilt home. It was a reminder that (at least, in my opinion), the most impactful travel experiences aren’t found at the crowded monuments, like the ancient temples of Angkor Wat just minutes down the road, but in the quiet, shared rhythms of everyday life.
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