Got up early this morning and took my little boat for a spin up the tonle saap.

I notices the Vietnamese floating village and then not 1km or 2km past them was the chams floating village.

both villages looked the same just the chams had the minarets in the center and also not as nice when passing by.

My question is. Do they get along with 1 another? They trade and barter with eachother? How about making friends? whats their relationship on the water?

My GF says they are neutral with each other but trust Yuon more then Cham. (She maybe saying this bias)

So anybody got some info?

do the chams speak some kind of bahasa melayu or just normal Khmer language?

They have their own language or something.

I remember meeting a Westerner in Phnom Penh who wrote a dictionary for it or something (and it wasn't some drunken bar talk).

on the rare occasions i have been around them, there were a lot of malay words it seemed to me.

The Add Jay wrote:Got up early this morning and took my little boat for a spin up the tonle saap.

I notices the Vietnamese floating village and then not 1km or 2km past them was the chams floating village.

both villages looked the same just the chams had the minarets in the center and also not as nice when passing by.

My question is. Do they get along with 1 another? They trade and barter with eachother? How about making friends? whats their relationship on the water?

My GF says they are neutral with each other but trust Yuon more then Cham. (She maybe saying this bias)

So anybody got some info?

Honestly I have no idea if Cham and Youn in Cambodia get along with each other well. I think they don't fight each other as they might consider themselves as foreigners in other country and they just mind their own business. In my opinion, for those who knew their history how they lost their country to Vietnam they might hated Vietnam as like many Kampuchea Krom activists. Your girlfriend said she trusts Youn more than Cham, she might was referring to the black magic. Most of Cambodians believed that Cham have black magic and can hurt them. However I personally don't afraid of black magic and I have a few close friends who are Cham. They are nice people.

If you asked which nations Cambodian get along the most, I would say Cham. Most of Cambodians prefer Cham to live in Cambodia and we regarded them as Cambodian as like those Chinese people who fled from china to Cambodia long long time ago. I think we feel a lot more secured to allow Cham to live in Cambodia as we believed that they are not gonna do anything with our land unlike Youn who rapidly came to live in Cambodia both legal and illegal and might try to annex parts of Cambodia to Vietnam ( just like the case in crimea)

frank lee bent wrote:do the chams speak some kind of bahasa melayu or just normal Khmer language?

Some of them speak both and some other only know Khmer.

Most I've met can only speak khmer. They also learn basic Arabic for obvious reasons. As others have said, I've never heard Khmers say anything derogatory towards chams. But historically, they were mistreated by several regimes in the past. They're typically really hard workers though. Good fisherman (like the Viets), but also good farmers. Chams will often rotate crops over the course of a year (rice then various veggies throughout the year), whereas many khmer will just plant one rice crop and then do nothing the rest of the year... Obviously not 100% true, but from what I've observed, they do tend to be hard workers.

Yeah Cambodia is Crimea, I read that yesterday. Idiots.

Vietnamese established commercial fishing on the Tonle Sap by the 1880s. They came to better feed their families not to swallow the fucking country.

Ain't vietnam has a river ? Why can't they better feed thier families in thier own country? How come you know vietnem is not trying to swallow Cambodia? Do you think Cambodians can go and live in Vietnam as Vietnameses do in Cambodia? i hope you have learned a lots about Cambodia history especially our relatioship with Vietnam, before you said such thing.

Note: i am not a racist. i just wrote about the majority of Cambodian's perception toward Vietnamese.