Amazing Quest: Stories from Cambodia | Somewhere on Earth: Cambodia | Free Documentary

[Music] yay [Music] [Music] in the heart of southeast asia lies the kingdom of cambodia with its fascinating elusive charm after years of turmoil and conflict cambodia is now well on the way to reconstruction there's a yearning for peace evident in the revival of the ancestral arts but also in the rediscovery of cambodia's natural treasures here there are people committed to a better life and to a new battle saving the environment [Music] [Music] a miracle of nature is the lifeblood of cambodia more than just a lake it is the elusive domain of water with its floods and droughts it sets the rhythm of life for three million cambodians [Music] orn sao is a child in the lake water has always been part and parcel of his life [Music] i have in fact always lived on the lake i wouldn't know what to do on dry land what's more i know how to handle boats and gifts on land they use bikes scooters and cars and i don't know anything about all that i don't know how to do the things they do on dry land [Music] orn lives on the western part of the lake in the village of prechtoal which literally means end of the shores six months a year the river overflows its banks and floods the forest a village like any other or almost for here nothing is fixed everything floats life is suspended gliding along the surface of the water [Music] so we teach them how to swim so they won't be afraid of the water later on we worry they might drown they start learning when they're three or four years old it's so when we go off somewhere we don't have to worry about an accident happening back home like children all over the world they love swimming but not bath time it's things [Music] life on a lake means adapting to go anywhere you have to take a boat even if it's just to drop in on the neighbors [Music] from a very young age the lake dwellers have to know how to handle a wide variety of craft even more so since there are no traffic regulations on tonne sap [Music] [Music] the village school is a very popular spot because it's the only place where the children can run [Music] on is getting ready to leave for ten days he's a ranger in the prechtoal bird sanctuary my big worry is if my family gets sick during the night there's no one to take them to the hospital you wearing daddy's hat come on a little kiss a family today daddy's going away to work in the forest i'm off don't worry there are 42 rangers to keep watch over the sanctuary the patrols always take place in tandem [Music] for orn the profession of forest ranger runs in the family he's teamed up with his brother rota for their patrols into the flooded forest of prechtoali [Music] in 1997 the unesco declared tunnel sapp a world biosphere reserve [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning sir it's almost finished i'm coming up now to give you a hand and to see that fantastic view from up there the rangers have constructed a dozen such platforms they used to survey the zone to count the animals they also serve as base camps building a platform like this takes two days with five or six people but if there are only two or three of us you have to figure six and seven days first we have to study the type of tree then we have to figure out the best angle for the platform so we now there has to be a clear view and the tree has to be the tallest one around the two brothers cut the motor and row into the heart of the reserve to avoid spooking the animals and to spot eventual poachers we're stricter hi guys how's it going so what's the report today have you seen anybody bothering our animals no nobody just some local fishermen we gave them a friendly talking to it's time for the new crew to take over until the next change in shifts oh it's so hot [Applause] [Music] there are loads of birds i see white all over [Music] 23 24 25 females 11 12 13 13 nests [Music] the fish filled waters of tunley sap make it a paradise for migrating birds that flock here in the mating season but the excessive poaching of nestlings and eggs has disrupted the ecosystem out of 100 species listed 11 are in danger of extinction before my father and i used to poach animals for there'd be nothing left not a single species of birds then later there were groups from the ministry of the environment and ngos that came to inform people about endangered animals to explain and educate us about the reproduction of species because there were some birds on the brink of extinction so my father and i thought it over and we decided to get involved and to work for the protection of nature and birds to preserve them for future generations [Music] [Music] the lake is a source of life for the birds but for the people as well the water hyacinth an invasive plant harmful to the environment is an abundant source of raw material for the village women they've formed a cooperative and export their craft work all over the world fishing is still the main activity on the lake it has allowed the lake dwellers to meet their needs since the dawn of time [Music] ten days later horn has finished his shift and is now back in the village hello my friend hi horn uh you haul up your nets yes can you sell me 20 or 30 kilos i don't have that much i'll take whatever you have i have 12 and a half kilos okay go ahead orn needs a lot of fish he has many mouths to feed we have about 60 crocodiles in all here there are four categories the one-year-olds two-year-olds three-year-olds and the over tens these crocodiles help round out orn's meager rangers salary they're sold for their meat and for their skin as well horn started his crocodile farm about 10 years ago [Music] back then i captured some in the wild i can say that now because these laying females here they're at least 10 years old and these are the crocodiles i capture with my father for breeding now i didn't take many we captured two or three okay well four or five and we keep them for breathe [Applause] go on pull the rope that way it's time to go [Music] twice a year they make the big move [Applause] [Applause] they don't bother with trucks and packing boxes here they simply move the house with the whole family inside [Music] there's the high water season in the low water season now when the water level rises we move back towards the forest when the water recedes the level is low and that can destabilize the house make it rock on the bottom you see so we head for deeper water so the house doesn't get grounded as the khmer saying goes you have to follow the channels to enter the estuary which means we have to adapt to all sorts of situations [Applause] the birds do the same thing in the high water season they leave the lake then when the water level drops they come back to the same spot this former poacher has radically changed the direction of his life protecting nature is his way of refusing to yield to fate about a hundred kilometers away young ammon nem also decided to challenge destiny 352 steps and a 76 meter climb separate the gods of the vat temple from mere mortals [Music] this [Music] [Music] usually i train from 8 to 11 a.m and from two to five in the afternoon monday through friday i've been doing circus for 10 years at first your muscles get really sore sometimes your joints are hot the training is hard and it takes up a lot of time you really have to persevere the main thing is to stick with it for your own future is 19 he was born in batambang province in the west of cambodia and is now a student in the town's circus school here before my family was in a bad way we were poor at all [Music] my brother was training then so i would go watch him and i saw that the school would give out cookies so whenever cookie day came around i goes home after each training session his brother sopha is also a circus performer while attending the far school he was spotted by the national circus school in quebec i've been at it all day now works with the world famous circa du soleil between tours he shares his experience with his younger brother here's the family photo i saw that my brother traveled to france so one day i asked him how come he got to go to france and he said if you want to go to france you have to be in the circus i tried it and i liked it i feel like i have a lot of support because i have a brother in canada another who is a professional in the cm rehab circus and my big brother who's a good circus teacher so i'm surrounded by family who can guide me in my choices i would be very proud to be as good as them [Music] thanks to the success of his children the situation of aman's father has improved and now he has a tuk-tuk today he's taking amman to see his brother perform at siem reap 170 kilometers from batambang [Music] when my children started going to the far school i thought they were just going to learn how to read and write they would be doing a normal program i didn't know they'd be doing circus arts and afterwards i watched their training every day because i was afraid they get hurt [Music] my dream is to become a performer who plays all over the country all over the world and all the countries that i've never been to that's my dream i want to see to hear to experience how beautiful it is and how difficult it can be where my limits are that's it i want to experience everything [Music] every day of the year in the siem reap big top the acrobats warm up before the show that quan is one of the nine founders of the school that trained all these performers then in 1996 we started a music department and then in 1998 we started the circus the idea was to help the street kids the vagabonds the poor children and give them the chance to learn an artistic profession a man has gone backstage to see his brother you need help no no no you'll mess me up when i see how talented my big brother is i'm not jealous but it's not in a spirit of competition [Music] this entire adventure sprang from a place free and open to all a unique school far from the cell pack which literally means light of the arts it's open to underprivileged children and goes from kindergarten through high school an education in the arts here puts the smile back on the children's faces brandy is amman's eldest brother the career of an acrobat is short he retired from performing at 33 and became a teacher and choreographer keep your balance yeah just like that [Music] when i was a child i was in the street selling cakes it was what you could call the life of poor people as soon as i started studying here made me very happy it changed my life and that of all the members of my family my brothers my sisters it's all thanks to the generosity of the far school that encouraged us to go on stage to study abroad so they come to train like me before [Applause] [Music] [Music] learning the profession means sweat sacrifice and injuries on stage there's no harness no nets these athletes are entering a high-risk profession [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] you [Music] circus in cambodia dates back to the 6th century a.d it was not merely an affair of street performers it was ranked among the noble arts and entered into the spiritual world of pagodas and temples the totalitarian khmer rouge regime tried to put an end to everything that we called the divine and the kingdom very few dancers capable of teaching the age-old gestures of the apsaras survived here at the far school they are reviving these arts that nearly disappeared [Music] the memory of the circus is also engraved in the holy of holies in the temples of the ancient kingdom of encore debt spent his childhood in refugee camps the arts have allowed him to heal the wounds of war for 23 years now he has devoted himself to the revival of his country's ancestral arts this section here illustrates the circus in pre-anchor times was the circus the same back then as it is now uh based on my money i think that back then they didn't have as many techniques as that uh on this bar relief you can they were strong to be able to carry three men as far as overall technique goes that's international it's universal but what marks us off from the others is that here it's inscribed in this wall which proves that it goes back at least to that time look it's carved into the stone indelible uh [Applause] to pass otherwise there's an accident [Music] uh and i wondered how they managed to make the flame flare up [Music] to become a circus performer one has to strive for perfection to surpass oneself and then to surpass the others [Music] i practice all the time even at home i take a normal stick with no flame little by little i got to be comfortable with that eventually the teacher noticed me and let me practice with fire i think it was because he saw i was making good progress [Music] the circus is an art that dates back to ancient times and i'm happy and proud to be carrying on this art today we work to improve so that it continues to evolve so that people here and abroad realize that it is a beautiful art form becoming a circus artist means rehearsing tirelessly to make the public believe at least while the show lasts that magic is possible [Music] with their bodies as their only instrument they prove to us that dreams can become reality amman's story is also the story of many other children like him the story of poor but determined kids who give their all for their dreams and eventually work their way into the spotlight [Music] [Laughter] [Music] present-day cambodia is resolutely turned towards hope and the future to travel to the ends of the earth to pursue one's dreams wherever they may lead the idyllic shores of cambodia are the unexpected scene of an extraordinary adventure [Music] 13 kilometers off the southern coast of cambodia lies a string of islands as beautiful as they are fragile beneath the surface of the water marine life is suffering in silence from the damage of illegal fishing which is rampant here [Music] 12 years ago paul ferber began a new life he left england and landed on these tropical islands in the gulf of thailand he has never gone back he decided to devote himself to this sea that gave him a new lease on life [Music] i'd like to think i'm an advocate of the sea um when you see something that's that's wrong you have to try and do something you have to try and do something to make it right so the aim being here is to protect all of the ocean to bring it back to to make it what it once was which you're probably looking at a couple of hundred years before that happens it'll never happen in my lifetime but if i can actually just bring it back to a point where it's a healthy functioning ecosystem and it will it will do the rest itself with the help of the government paul settled on this previously uninhabited island croatia he's the founder of mcc marine conservation cambodia his ngo regularly receives a dozen or so khmer and international volunteers and scientists in order to protect the marine life they designed a system of reinforced concrete towers everyone lends a hand for the work even paul's son b yay you know why we do this yeah we make the house for the fish to live in maybe if we're really lucky we can grow some oysters on them too huh the oysters will clean the water yeah they see grass around them yeah okay pretty good at four years old and the first thing he says is can we have seagrass too cause it cleans the water [Music] the very very first initial idea was anti-trolling trawling is such a horrific and destructive way of fishing it's like cutting down all of your fruit trees you know just to get one harvest so the idea was to create something big enough heavy enough and stable enough to stop trolling boats they could almost be like little miniature natural aquaculture units after two years they would be able to be a sustainable harvest so at least one block would sustain one family with with collecting oysters um mussels we can grow them in there you know it's not just about making the ocean beautiful again it's about making sure that all of the people out there have something again [Music] we see the life coming back all the time [Music] the first changes were very slow you know six months seven months and we've seen maybe three or four more fish and the wood is still pretty dirty but now after three years it's starting to explode it's amazing you go in and every every other day you're seeing a species that you haven't seen here before it's really hopeful i mean it's still only our tiny little area but with with the government agreeing to expand the conservation areas over the next year we can we can expand we can we can take that and start to just build more and more [Music] life on the island unfolds to the rhythm of nature and the activities of the community paul now lives permanently on the island along with his wife and five children the scientists that pass through take turns in homeschooling the children [Music] came here from quebec two years ago she's in charge of mapping the project here is the island of kosei here is the dock and the reef and the protected area where we'll place the blocks a zone 500 meters by 150 meters there'll be a block placed every 50 meters these underwater towers will be like sentinels or around the island you can't see them as you would see them on the land but the fishing boats will realize right away if they try to sail in here it's like an invisible shield the island has an interesting past now it's in the front line fighting for the environment but it also bears the scars of yesterday's wars for the island is situated in a strategically important spot near the vietnamese border they began to build bunkers here during the second world war this continued under the khmer rouge who were at war with their neighbors [Music] i come to the beer often at night from here i can tell exactly where the boats are from the noise of the engine i can tell what type of boats they are because we're attempting to stop the illegal boats that are destroying the area when we first started here you could literally feel the noise on the island you'd feel it through your feet the island would be shaking with the noise of the boats they were so close it's big and it was every night now it's decreased a lot if we were to hear an illegal boat now the first thing i'd do is informed to the fishery administration then we would inform to the police and depending on their answers or whether they can do anything which depends on whether we would then go out to tackle that boat paul watches over a zone of about 80 square kilometers he records each one of his interceptions and sometimes they have to get tough straight through the middle of cambodia here he is here one over here cambodia's territorial waters have been ravaged by illegal and destructive fishing methods like trawl nets dynamite and electricity that night there were so many illegal boats that paul and his crew received armed assistance from the authorities it's one way to keep the outlaws at bay [Music] at dawn the horizon is once again calm it's time for the local crab fishermen to haul in their traps [Music] paul keeps himself informed through regular contact with all the local fishermen they're doing pretty good all the crab in here we're on a long tail um small scale fishing uh using what they call lock kadam lockdown is basically a collapsible crab trap they've got 2 000 of them that they laid out last night and they're pulling up now oh something cut the line there's a one or two damage traps but every time they lay their traps they don't know whether when they come back to pick them up those traps will still be there when the trawling boat comes through most of the time they just don't care about the small scale fishermen so does there be a line of traps underwater as their net comes through it catches those traps when they pull up their net they could be three or four kilometers away and they've dragged all of that fishing gear to there it's got damaged along the way and then once they do pull it up they'll just have some ropes and some traps and they'll just cut that they don't want it they don't care about it they cut it and throw it back in we really really really want to support these guys because this this type of fishing gear is very very sustainable it's true i myself have lost thousands of traps especially over there there are little fish and crabs but when the trawlers come through they just rip up everything even the coral paul himself refuses to fish so when he gets the chance he buys seafood from the locals to support the type of fishing he believes i in turn [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] paul has had a thousand and one lives he attended police school he has worked as a mason he was a stone cutter florist tree doctor first aid worker when he became a diving instructor he saw how urgent it was to save the sea he was a trailblazer in creating cambodia's first marine sanctuary [Music] [Music] i loved small stuff when i went diving it wasn't about all the big things you could see or the clear water it was about finding all of the really bizarre and strange camouflage creatures um ghost pipefish the nudie branches all the all of the small marine life [Music] a creature right out of a page of mythology has riveted paul's attention [Music] when i came to cambodia i did a dive in samlum where i saw 56 seahorses in one hour four different species and and from juveniles to big beautiful colorful adults it it it blew my mind i had never seen anything like it and i started to video them photograph them i should go out every day just spend that was all i did i just take every time i went out just go to see the seahorses paul is one of the rare specialists in seahorses this unique species where the male bear the young some of them have been marked so a cleaning is in order to identify them even though it has survived for over 40 million years the seahorse is now besieged by many dangers it is a much sought-after remedy in traditional medicine people attribute all sorts of powers to it on account of its strange looks [Music] and then for whatever reasons the the the trawling fleets from synopville and including a few vietnamese boats which came specifically for the seahorses just started to trawl all of those areas so i would go down to see a seahorse i'd been filming for a month or two months and there was nothing there was no home there was nothing that was the same was bare um the uh i'm seeing little purple one on i all crushed it just been crushed and uh yeah they destroyed everything i loved so that's pretty much how mcc started they they destroyed the areas [Music] paul is a model of courage and determination he has made radical life choices straight from his heart and mind how many go babe good enough jasmine he's 40 years old he's not rich but he is free most important he's protecting what he holds most dear his family and the nature that surrounds him let's go see your mama [Music] not already yet see two or three day and can't eat okay my feeling for for my children i i see that there's so many things that are wrong with the world and the biggest one is that we destroy it we destroy it every day and kids are taught in schools and and then just just through the tv and magazines to aspire to so many things that really are just not that important the latest fashions and who's got the best trainers and you know fantasy stories about things that just are completely unreal it's it's i i want them to grow up with with an appreciation of the earth and a connection to it i kind of a connection to nature that that allows them to be change makers you know i hope that i instill in them enough of the importance that unless some people stand up and start to do something to change then nothing will change the the world will become darker in their lifetime than it ever has in mind [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 462,751

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), somewhere on earth, amazing stories, amazing stories from cambodia, amazing quest, cambodia

Id: s-nnsdcVNH8

Length: 52min 34sec (3154 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 20 2023