We made a scouting trip to Prek Toal in March 2026 to see the whole day for ourselves. It is the longest day we offer on the lake, around ten hours door to door, and the bird sanctuary at the end of it is the reason to go.
The day starts early. We drove the short way to the port at Chong Kneas and boarded one of the community tourism boats for the crossing of Tonle Sap Lake. The water was high but there were still a few shallow stretches where the boat slowed and felt its way through, and the long-tail engine is loud, so bring something for your ears if you are sensitive to noise. The crossing took about an hour and a half.
At the village our local representative met us and walked us through Prek Toal: the commune office, the reverse osmosis system that gives the village its clean drinking water, and a one-room office with photos of the village and its birds. The village is a floating one, so even the walk is partly by boat. From the roof of the commune centre you get a wide view over one channel of it, and that is only a fraction: most of the houses sit out of sight behind the trees. It is interesting, but it is also the part of the day we would keep short, and on our tours it is optional.
Then the main event. We changed to a smaller boat with a birding guide and set off for the reserve. The sanctuary is guarded: you pass a ranger checkpoint before you go in. Inside, the boat pushes slowly through channels of water hyacinth and the trees fill with birds. We saw hundreds sitting in the branches. The birding guide handed out binoculars to share and, each time we sighted something, named the species and explained how the colony works. Fishing is not allowed inside the reserve, so the water is full of fish, and they were literally jumping out of it around the boat. That is why the birds are here: safe from hunting, with more food than they can eat. Prek Toal is known for its spot-billed pelicans, painted storks, greater adjutants and darters; which ones you see depends on the month. It was the highlight of the trip by a long way, and the reason we built our Prek Toal day around the sanctuary rather than the village.
Lunch was fried rice and fruit at a homestay with a small restaurant on the water, reasonably priced, then the bigger boat back across the lake to Chong Kneas. Ten hours in all. Our recommendation: skip the commune centre and go straight to the boat change-over, where there is a place for a bathroom break, and the day comes in closer to eight hours.
If you are deciding between the Siem Reap villages and Prek Toal, our village comparison explains the trade-offs: Prek Toal is the furthest and the most expensive, and the only one with a protected bird colony.
