Battambang - stay another day!

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Unsure of why the expats in Phnom Penh were laughing when we told them we'd booked a bus to Battambang, we soon found out that it can only have been the constant kareoke on the bus that was to blame! Luckily we have some music of our own to drown out the very repetitive songs! The bus took about 9 hours, with a few loo stops and some lunch. When we arrived in Battambang it was pouring with rain (a very welcome relief from the unrelenting heat and humidity!) We checked into a great little guesthouse for $3 per night (yep $3 for our own double room with ensuite), and tucked into a few well deserved beers.

The next day we splurged on hiring bicycles for the day ($1 each), and took a tour around town. Battambang is one of the biggest towns in Cambodia outside of Phnom Penh, but it has a much more relaxed go to it... to the extent that I was happy to get on a bicycle and not fear for my life too badly! We lasted about 2 hours before we were literally melting off our bikes, but then had another attempt in the late afternoon. That evening we went to a cooking class in a local tuk-tuk drivers house. It was fantastic!! He picked us up from our guesthouse, took us to the local market to buy fresh ingredients, and then took us out to his home to get the cooking underway. His wife has some great cooking skills, but very little English (enough to direct us, and laugh at how hopeless we were at chopping lemongrass!) We made 3 Cambodian dishes - Fish Amok, Chicken curry (curry paste from scratch), and Beef Lok Lak, and all of them were delicious. We were also partaking in some generously offered rice wine mixed with coke (actually very easy to drink) but were fairly shocked to learn that it had also been flavoured with snake! We were then shown some of his other bottles that were currently 'maturing' - filled with tarantula's!! Very glad we weren't asked to sample that one! But ignorance is bliss as they say and the snake wine was very drinkable!

Day 3 saw us take a tuk-tuk tour of the region - a long day in the heat but totally worth it. Our tuk-tuk driver was very knowledgeable and spoke quite good English, so we were able to ask lots of questions and get to know a bit more about Cambodian life. Highlights of the day included the 2 temples we visited (one of them pre Angkor Wat), a spot of rain in the afternoon, and the real Bat Cave - literally millions of little bats flying out from a cave in the mountain to hunt at dusk, a 45 minute show if you watch them all!

We loved Battambang and it was great to see more of the countryside. Next stop is the tourist mecca of Siem Reap, and Angkor Wat....

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