Boeung Sne Bird Sanctuary

Boeung Sne Bird Sanctuary — Quick Facts

What is it?

nature — Ten Thousand Storks Over a Flooded Forest — Prey Veng's Hidden Wild Spectacle

Where?

Prey Veng , Cambodia

Entry Fee

Community boat hire roughly $20–40 per boat (seats several people)

Opening Hours

Daylight hours; early morning is prime

Time Needed

Half a day on site; a full day with travel from Phnom Penh

Best Time

Wet season and early dry (roughly June–December), when the lake is full and nesting peaks

Don't Miss

The moment the flooded forest opens and the sky fills with wings — thousands of openbills lifting at once

What to See at Boeung Sne

The Openbill Colony

The sanctuary’s signature is the Asian openbill — a stork named for the permanent gap in its bill, evolved for extracting the snails it feeds on. Around ten thousand of them nest and roost in Boeung Sne’s flooded forest, joined by cormorants, pelicans, egrets and herons. At dawn and dusk the sky over the lake moves like weather.

The Boat Tour

Local boatmen from the lakeside community run visitors through the maze of drowned trees — engines cut to a drift near the colonies, close enough to watch nest traffic without disturbing it. The boat fee (typically $20–40 for a private boat seating several) is the community’s incentive to keep protecting the birds, and it shows: the area has been designated for sustainable-use protection.

Cambodia Without the Crowd

Boeung Sne sees a fraction of the visitors of the Tonle Sap’s famous bird sanctuaries, and almost none of them foreign. Come for the birds; remember the trip for the flooded-forest quiet and the lakeside village’s welcome.

How to Get to Boeung Sne

The lake is in Ba Phnom district, Prey Veng province — about 115km east of Phnom Penh, 2.5–3 hours by car.

By car from Phnom Penh: National Road 1 east, then north from the Kampong Trabaek area on local roads; navigate by the map link and ask locally for “Toul Poan Taley”
As a day trip: Leave Phnom Penh at dawn to hit the lake in good light and beat the heat

Practical Tips

Bring binoculars if you have them — the colonies reward magnification
Wet season (June–December) is emphatically the time: full lake, peak birds; late dry season shrinks both
Sun protection is non-negotiable on open water
Agree the boat price and duration on shore; carry small notes

Nearby Attractions

Prey Veng town — the sleepy provincial capital and its lakeside promenade, en route
The Mekong at Neak Loeung — the great river crossing on the road back to Phnom Penh