"They call it the Floating Village. The only thing that floated away? My money and my expectations.

So here’s how this disaster began.

Picture this: last night in Siem Reap, we ask our TukTuk driver what’s fun to see. He cheerfully says: “Floating Village!” Sounded like Venice with palm trees. We were sold! Even tho he forgot to mention the price tag…

Next morning, off we went. Almost an hour of bouncing around in the back of a TukTuk. Think “free chiropractic session,” but less relaxing. Still, we thought, surely this will be worth it.

We arrive at the ticket office, bam! $85 USD for 4 people. Our jaws hit the dusty floor. Even the pictures on the wall didn’t look worth $8.50. After a quick family huddle, we said nope. Our poor driver was shocked too and tried haggling, eventually scoring us a “discount” down to $60. Big win, right? Spoiler: not really.

So we hop on a boat, the four of us, excited for some magic. What we got? Houses on stilts. Not floating. Not magical. More “dilapidated construction site.” After about 30 minutes, we stopped at a floating restaurant. Ah, now the real horror: baby crocodiles in a glass box, a snake, and two baby rabbits stuffed in a wire cage with no food or water, while kids poked at them like they were claw machines. My heart sank faster than this so-called floating village.

Next up: more crocodiles, trapped in a tiny pen. Oh, and if we wanted to see mangroves (finally something that might be interesting), guess what... extra charge! We passed.

We also skipped lunch there (we weren’t hungry for overpriced misery). Instead, we sailed on… to absolutely nothing. A quick loop around the big lake, then a woman on another boat pulled up like a floating convenience store, trying to sell us overpriced sweets and notebooks. No thanks.

Total trip: 1.5 hours. Total regret: priceless. Honestly, the only thing floating was my disappointment. I’m pretty sure someone behind this “attraction” is laughing all the way to the bank.

We tipped the captain (not his fault), but this “attraction” is basically a tourist ATM with boats.

Floating Village? More like Sinking Expectations Village."

Steven Filipowicz

"About 1 hour drive from Siem Reap, very expensive, in total we paid around $100 (40$ for entry, 40$ for transport, 10$ for a small kayak ride. You are constantly pushed to buy things or donate money. They drop you at a restaurant and try to make you buy food or see the crocodiles in their small enclosure. On the small kayak there are women on boats who try to sell you things about halfway through the journey. The kayak then drops you at another restaurant/shop where you are encouraged to buy something.
Coming through the village itself was interesting and it was interesting to see some of the structures holding up the houses. Generally not worth it, not a great experience, go to Wat Chocolate in town instead for a short, cheap enjoyable experience."

Ben Jones

"Be careful it is quite a scam! After booking a ride there through the hotel (return for 18$), the tuk tuk driver told me it did not include the entrance ticket and he didn’t know the exact price but it should be 10 dollars. Before arriving at the village, there was a checkpoint where they oblige you to pay 30$ as a solo traveller for a « private » (only one way) boat. You should not pay more more than 20$ and if you do as if you’re going to leave some people managed to pay only 15$. It will take you in 20mn to the stop where there is the rowing boat (11$ at first negociated for 8$), that will take you to the mangrove for a tour of 15-20mn (with the mandatory stop at sellers on boats pretending you can buy things for your driver or the community) and then directly to a restaurant boat where you have to wait while people push you to buy again souvenirs. You will escape it by watching 5 crocodiles trapped in a cage at the other side of the boat. Then your « private » driver will say there is an issue in his boat and he cannot go on the lake (beside other small boats being there) and that you need to take the big boat to watch the sunset on the lake: ie the boat will do 200m on the lake and stop for 10mn before returning to the arrival point (to meet your Tuktuk driver in my case).
On the way to the lake, the captain told me there were 3000 thousand people in the village, and on the way back a guide told me there were now 6000 people living there in 2024, 3000 was in 2020.
Obviously this tourist scam operation has brought the population of the village to double and therefore considerable pollution to the lake (there were lots of pollution visible on the mangrove tour beside the nets they had put in place to hide it), I doubt there is any community sense here.
I strongly recommend anyone to go somewhere else until they have sorted all of this out, or not do any of this Tonle Sap « excursion » at all. It wasn’t worth the money nor the hassle, nor the time."

Guillaume T