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Published: February 13th 2007
Well they had us up at the ridiculous hour of 5am to catch our ferry to Battambang. For those of you that don't know Battambang is Cambodia's second largest city (Not that you would know by the look of it).
An hour of collecting folks around the town and a brief bus journey brought us to our ferry. It was less a ferry and more a glammed up skiff with a roof to be fair. We were amongst the lucky ones who got the shaded seats downstairs, where as some people were on the roof in the sun. As it was dry season the journey took 9 hours and we were fairly glad to get off it in the end.
It was however, amazing to see so many people living along and on the river. Every child that spotted us dived into the water screaming "Hello". We stopped for a short break at a floating restaraunt and as the heavy westerners loaded off the boat we came fairly close to sinking the whole lot.
Once we reached Battambang we negotiated a guesthouse and were whisked away. We seemed to be staying in the tallest building in Cambodia and
naturally our room was on the the top floor. After some food we went to bed exhausted.
The next day we organised two motos to take us on a tour of the area. Our drivers Mr Kem and A.N Other (No chance at spelling his name) were great fun and we felt reasonably safe on the dust roads. Our first stop was at Phnom Sampeau. It was here that the Khmer Rouge converted the temple on the mountain slopes to a prison to hold "Enemies of the Regime" before executing them. Following on from the temple building (Which is back in use as a temple) we walked to the two killing caves where hundreds of skulls of the victims are on display. It's a pretty eerie place as you can imagine.
Ironically there were also two large field artillery guns used against the Khmer Rouge as they retreated into the jungles of the surrounding areas on the mountain slopes. They are also building a beautiful temple on top of the mountain (Seems you can never have too many temples).
From there we drove to Wat Banan. This temple believed to be 100 years older than Angkor is
built at the top of very large flight of stairs (359 steps if your interested). From there we headed to the Bamboo train which is run by a a bunch of families in a local village. Along the way we passed lots of fields and familys waving and kids handing out flowers to us. The scenery was amazing and it was like stepping back in time in terms of the methods of farming in use.
Basically the bamboo trains represents an "innovative" and cheap way of using the ancient rail lines running from Battambang to Phnom Penh. The train is assembled from a pair of train rollers, a bamboo platform and a lawnmower engine. We were afraid to ask for anymore details and assume there are all sorts of safety mechanisims built into it (Ahem). We flew along the rickety tracks between 30 and 40mph encountering much busier "local trains" bringing villagers into the city. Once back in the city we saw the imposing statue that greets people as they enter the city before getting back to the guesthouse covered in red dust.
Next Stop Phnom Penh...
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