Advertisement
Published: September 21st 2010
Edit Blog Post
Tonight is our second night in Battambang (pronounced bat-am-bong). It's a small town fairly and doesn't see too many tourists. We took the public bus here yesterday. It was about a 6 hour ride from Phnom Phen. The ride was okay...and we got to watch super cheesy Chinese Kung-Fu movies dubbed over in Khmer. After we arrived and checked-in we set out for lunch. We went to a local restaurant; the food and fruit shakes were so good.
Back at our hotel we were picked up by moto-taxi drivers and we set off for a countryside tour. First we stopped in a small village where they make rice paper wrappers. After that we headed to a village where they make fish paste. Yeah, it smells as good as it sounds... The fermented fish is ground up into a paste, and it's a popular Cambodian food. We carried on to a village where they make rice noodles. Just after that it started pouring rain...pouring is an understatement, we were absolutely drenched in seconds. But we were out in the middle of nowhere, so we continued on the motos. It rained so hard that it hurt your skin. We arrived at the
bamboo train, and we went anyways, but it wasn't like we could get any more wet. The bamboo train is like a flat bed platform made out of bamboo slats. It's powered with a lawnmower engine and travels down an old set of train tracks. The locals use it to transport produce from the farms in to the market. It's a bumpy ride, but it was fun. We stopped to watch the sunset then headed back. For dinner we took tuk-tuks to a local guide's house and his wife cooked dinner for us. It was really good, but there was so much food!!! The guide was very interesting and told us many things about Cambodian culture and history.
Today we got up early and took a van out to the countryside to climb some mountains. We didn't realize today was boot-camp day! At the first mountain we walked up the hill with little kids running along and fanning us. Trev had lots of fun chasing and teasing them and I took some pictures. First we visited a monastery at the top. Near the monastery was a cave that the Khmer Rouge used for killing people during the Pol Pot
regime. The monks continue to use the cave for meditation, and have built a memorial inside. We continued walking up the mountain to a Wat at the top. It was so, so hot. There were lots of monkeys at the top, and they were very entertaining, but we were warned to stay away (they steal things and bite). We walked down a steep set of stairs then rested a bit before continuing on to the next mountain. The next mountain involved climbing about 300 steep stairs to the Banan Temple at the top. It was originally a Hindu temple, but was converted to a Buddhist temple. Once again, we were so, so hot and very sweaty. After walking down the stairs (which was much easier) we ate lunch at the Khmer-style restaurant near the temple. We sat on the floor of a small hut, which was raised up on stilts above a lotus pond. Lunch and drinks for both of us was $3.75 total (yeah, I know). We took the bus back to the hotel and took a much-needed shower. We set out to explore a bit, and we made our way to the market, but we weren't really into
it, and didn't look around for long. We've spent the last few hours working on updating everyone and uploading a few pictures. Internet is really slow, but better than it was in Phnom Penh. Tomorrow morning we will continue on to Siem Reap.
Lots of Love,
Court
Advertisement
Tot: 0.241s; Tpl: 0.051s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.065s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Wayne Mayowski
non-member comment
enjoying your blogs
looks like you are having the amazing time we all knew you would have, what an experience and it is only the begining. I am really enjoying your blogs keep up the good writing, pictures are great as well. Things at home are normal (same s- - - different pile) miss you guys