Birds’ Nests: Business and Ethnicity in Southeast Asia
Kasem Jandam
Silkworm Books: 2021
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The alarm woke me at 4am. Outside the gate my guide Lean was waiting quietly as I stepped on to the road. A member of the Cambodia Bird Guides Association, Lean is an acknowledged expert on the qualities of Prek Toal, a bird sanctuary fifty kilometres to the north of Siem Reap, home of the famous temple complex Angkor Wat. Over the day, Lean’s tutelage proved invaluable in unpacking its intricacies for me. From my house, we travelled to Chong Kheas, a bay on the edge of the Tonle Sap Lake. Here, still in the dark, we boarded a small craft to ferry us to the village of Sangkae, our entry point to Prek Toal.

Out on the Tonle Sap River, dawn was breaking as we entered the open water, shards of red and orange lighting up the sky and piercing the horizon as we moved north. Around us the air was chilled. At Sangkae, one of several floating villages bordering the Tonle Sap Lake, we switched craft, the slim long-tail we stepped into better suited to the narrow confines of the flooded forest to come.

• Tags: Cambodia, Issue 25, Kasem Jandam, Wayne McCallum