Battambang

Hey folks,

In the last blog Roberta talked about out tours of the temples around Siem Reap including the most famous Angkor Wat. What she failed to mention was how obsessed and full on geek mode she went into. For those of you who know her quite well, you know that when she gets into something she enjoys that she goes full bore. The temples were no exception. She ended up buying a book about the temples from one of the many kids trying to sell stuff and then had to read about every statue and carving as we went along! So after 3 days of slugging through the heat to see as many temples as we could with Roberta cracking the whip, I was ready to move on. Don't get me wrong they were very amazing but we are on vacation aren't we?!?! Haha I may be exaggerating a bit. Love you Hun.

The Lonely Planet said that the boat ride to Battambang was not to be missed, so we decided that's where we would head next. It had also said the journey can take anywhere from 5-8 hours depending on if it's the wet or dry season and we ended up finding out why it said that further on in the trip.

We bought our tickets from the guesthouse we were staying at and were told to be up and waiting at 6 am to get picked up and delivered to the boat which would leave at 7 am. So we did as we were told and in true Cambodian fashion the bus picked us up at 7:30 am. We were taken to one spot where a bunch of other travellers were waiting. After a few minutes another smaller bus showed up and we were packed in there like sardines. One guy lost it because he was too squished and was yelling at the bus driver and the helpers. Most was lost in translation so eventually the guy just got off the bus never to be seen again. This all happened before the wheels even started turning. The rest of us went on laughing. Some people expect things to run as they do in the Western world and that will get you no where over here.

We jumped on the boat with about 40 other people and started off. We headed through some canals to start with and then across Tonle Sap Lake. After a couple hours, we started heading down a river that was the home to thousands living in floating homes. These floating towns had schools, restaurants, post offices, and other things we would normally see in our towns.

School

 

Since they live on the river, it wasn't surprising that life centered around fishing. Longtail boats ripped around with all sizes of fish and nets within. Small fish that we would normally throw back in the water were caught in nets by the thousands. Sounds of people chopping up these small fish waxed and waned as we moved along. Many of the kids would stop what they were doing wave and yell hi as we moved past.

 

As we went the river got smaller and smaller and eventually we were down to a crawl as the boat navigated it's way around. Just when you thought there is no way that this river can get any smaller with the boat we were on, it would. And that's when we started getting hung up. We couldn't make the turns with our long boat and they were using a pole to push us off the banks.

There were many crocodile farms as well. These cages were full of crocs.

Fishing nets

 

The first time we had to jump off the boat and push it was quite a surprise that the water was only just above my knees. We all know that I have been gifted with the Watson legs, so it was very shallow. Meanwhile we are on quite a large boat in the middle of nowhere! In total we had to push 6-7 times. There were certainly times when I didn't think that we would get going again, but we succeeded. There is no way that the boat would keep taking that route in those conditions back in Canada, but we encounter things like that daily here. It's all a part of the Asia experience.

 

The next day we slept in and when touring around on a tuk tuk after lunch. Our first stop was at the bamboo train. The "train" was a small bamboo platform with train wheels on it which was run by a small engine. We cruised for around 20 mins down the warped tracks to the next station. We didn't feel like getting hassled there by all different people to buy things, so we just sat down in the first place and had a beer. The older lady there then tried to teach us Khmer (Cambodian language) which resulted in a lot of laughs. We then cruised back to the first station.

 

Our tuk tuk then took us to out to the bottom of a large rocky hill where we climbed to the top to check out a temple. There was also a few caves to explore. One of the caves was a memorial to the people killed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. There was many human skulls there which was kind of weird to see. I'll talk more about the Khmer Rouge in the next blog.

After that we descended back down the hill to watch millions of bats emerge from a cave. There was a steady stream coming from the cave for 30 minutes. It was quite amazing. As we made our way back to Battambang, we could still see them kilometres away looking like black ribbons in the sky.

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