In Cambodia, a business is run at whim of river's rise and fall

MEKONG JOURNAL

By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 3/20/2004

KAMPEE, Cambodia -- All along the Mekong, life ebbs and flows with the river's seasonal moods. In this village, a cafe rises and falls with it.

Each year in late January, when the river is low, Lon But Pun and six workers begin fastening the couple of dozen straw huts built on bamboo stilts that fit snugly into the rocks below. Then they lay straw roofs. And every year around April, as the Mekong swells with the melting snow in Tibet and later with the monsoon rains that sweep through Southeast Asia, the cafe is broken down. The important materials, such as the wood frames for the huts, are hauled back ashore, while the bamboo and straw are left and wash away with the rising tide that eventually spills into the South China Sea.

"We are only here for maybe four months every year. But it is a good four months," said Lon But Pun, 40. When the river is low in Kampee, a village of a few hundred people, small islands form, and rapids flow beneath the cafe.

Although the cafe does not make her much money, Lon But Pun said she enjoys the break from her other job. The remainder of the year, like the majority of people in remote Kratie province, she is a rice farmer.

For centuries, civilization here has been inexorably linked to the Mekong. The river, the world's 12th-longest and 10th-largest in terms of volume, also runs through Tibet, China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, providing a bounty of seafood and irrigation for rice crops.

Even in the 21st century, when motor boats have all but replaced paddle-driven skiffs and television antennae have sprouted atop many villagers' three-walled shacks, the basics of life have changed little. Lives are dictated not by a calendar or a school schedule, but by the river.

Recently, the river was doing its best impression of a grizzly bear in hibernation. It was a calm and soothing presence, and the cafe was drawing local tourists and a few backpackers along the section of the river from Cambodia to Laos.

It is not a fancy affair, and the menu (delivered verbally) is short. Seating consists of straw mats on the bamboo floors, while food and drink is limited to Angkor beer, potent Mekong whiskey, and such seasonal fruits as pineapple, Chinese pears, and dragonfruit.

The scenery is the big draw. The village is about 100 miles upriver from the capital, Phnom Penh. It takes two days to get here by water, the route demarcated by crumbling French colonial-era cement pylons. By car, on the recently reconstructed national highway, it is an eight-hour drive.

"It's so beautiful," said Riphy Ea, 32, a tourist from Phnom Penh who works for a foreign aid organization.

Across the small islands made of sand dunes and overgrown brush, the banks of the river rested 40 feet above water level. As four water buffaloes wallowed in shallow water bathed in the late-afternoon light, Riphy Ea smiled.

"I've never been here before, but look at how natural it is. I already want to come again next year," he said.

But before then, the Mekong will have its way. And if Lon But Pun has her way, and erects the cafe for a ninth year in 2005, it will be when the river says she can.

"Yes, I will try to build it again next year, but it is always different," she said. After the eight-month rainy season, the rocks and islands are never all in the same place.

©2004 Globe Newspaper Company.