Tonle Sap Lake

This guide to Tonle Sap Lake near Siem Reap follows children paddling themselves to school across Southeast Asia's largest lake, weaving past floating houses and a basketball court built on pontoons. It traces the odd feat this lake performs twice a year, when monsoon floodwaters shove the Tonle Sap River into running backward and the lake balloons to many times its dry season size. Watch the boats gliding by as you listen, the same little wooden hulls that double as bicycles, school buses and fishing craft.