Boneshaker Bamboo Train, Green Orange and Fish Paste Factory

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What do you get when you combine bamboo with a 250cc motorcycle engine and left over flatbed minesweepers from the Civil War? A train of course! But only in Battambang as these trains are unique, a cheap way for locals to travel, an inventive response to a lack of public transport. The 'noris' are assembled on a single track and have no brakes. If two noris are playing chicken on the same line, the one with the smallest load has to dismount entirely from the line and remount on the other side of the heavier nori.

Despite not having to get up until 6.30am, I was awake by 5.30, having slept soundly after yesterday's 5 temple marathon and hike. We left the best hotel we get to stay in and embarked on a three hour minibus journey to Battambang. This provincial capital is Cambodia's second largest city.

En route, Nin told us a little about the Cambodian people: the folk in the countryside grow very slowly due to poor diets, so a 15 year old will look more like a 7 year old. We had witnessed this the other day when a vendor pointed to his daughter and said she was 12 but she looked a lot younger and we thought it must have been due to an illness. Spiders and other insects are food for the very poor, Nin had eaten spiders as a child and he associates it with dire poverty, so does not eat them anymore. A stark contrast to us tourists being intrigued by it. However, grasshoppers make a good crispy snack that go nicely with Angkor beer - I'll take his word on that and stick to peanuts!

Unlike in China, the Cambodians do not eat cats and dogs and only have them as pets. This has something to do with a lot of them being Buddhists who are generally vegetarians anyhow. (I've given Nin the link to my travelblogs, so if he spots any errors in that I've not fully understood, he's most welcome to correct them!)

So we were in Battambang by 11.15 and were greeted with apple juice and aircon. Ahhhh. Whilst the others had lunch, Glyn and I had a quick dip in the rather cold pool which was on the second floor. I started taking macro photos of the flowers around the edge of the pool when some Aussies arrived, eating take-out. They started asking me the names of the flowers, er......

Nin took us to the fish paste factory at 1pm, possibly the hottest part of the day. He did this as it was a better idea than going cycling just yet. As we drove over the river, we saw the floating ramshackle hut which turned out to be the Fisheries Department. When I think of a factory, I think of giant buidlings with rows of people and machinery. The fish paste factory is nothing like this. It is very open, the main area having no walls and corrugated metal roof. There were huge pots of fish and fish bits, covered in flies. I have a bit of a cold at the moment and I felt grateful for this as the others kept harping on about the smell.

I saw two cats there, very well behaved because I know if my old cat, Candy lived there, she would be constantly chomping on fish. But these two were just chilling in the shade.

We saw a group of people working together, one guy chopping off fish heads, whilst a woman wearing only one plastic glove was gutting them. A few others were doing more chopping further along, not in a line, but some haphazard zig zag manner, sitting on stools with the fish on the floor, the juices and blood running to our feet..

Further along we saw rows and rows of fish being dried in the sun that was making quick work of shrivelling them up to leather. I saw a woman working who was donning a pink t-short with ABCDEF running vertically down the back, this put me in mind of people in the UK who wear clothing with asian characters on it just because it looks trendy. To be honest I do think that Cambodian letters look far prettier than Roman ones, but this maybe because I can't read Cambodian.

Back in Battambang, we went to the bike hire place which was down a narrow back street, just past a back-packers hostel. Nin took us on a tour of Battambang - he had asked if we'd wanted to drive out to see temples which he said were small and not as good as the ones we'd seen at Angkor Wat - but the group consensus was to see current local stuff. It was still blisteringly hot, but Nin found us a shady route (now that is a quite a skill!) and we even had a bit of a breeze! We stopped by various buildings on the main sreets as he told us all about them.

We are getting pretty fearless about cyling in the traffic now, well almost! I feel more relaxed in that there don't seem to be many road rules, so I'm not in much danger of breaking them. There's no motorbike test required for those who want to use mopeds on the roads, you just have to be 18+ and your parents teach you how to drive. It works for Cambodians as they are respectful to each other, but I shudder to think if that was the system in the UK.

The backstreets were quieter and we stopped at a place where a lady was selling green oranges. I refer to it as a 'place' as it wasn't really a shop, more like a covered open area at the front of her home, with her family milling about and two tiny shy kittens. We got to try the green oranges and they were nice enough, but though they are the best green oranges I have tasted, I think I prefer orange oranges as they are more orangey.

We carried along past homes, a few bars and a hospital where children are treated for free up to the age of 12. We were overtaken by a variety of vehicles including one that looked like a cross between a trike and tractor. Their motorcycle engines must be so powerful, because you see the motorbikes pulling trailers three times their length, with loads hanging even further off the back and out to the sides, then a bunch of people stting atop. They always seem bemused when I try to get a photo of this. Sometimes you get kids on the roadside with their hands outstretched to high-five you as you go past, I do try, but fear knocking one over.

Along the roadside and in the smaller shops they are selling plastic bottles and tubs of yellow liquid. What was it we asked? Petrol we were told, smuggled in from Thailand. It isn't the best quality, used only for mopeds and motorbikes, not for cars. How come they are so openly selling it if it's illegal? Nin has asked a policeman friend, why do you let this happen? He was told that the policeman himself buys it as he's on a low wage and cannot afford it from the proper petrol station, the price being $1.02 per litre as opposed to 80c from the smugglers.

We stopped by a guy fishing in a small river at the front of his house. His bucket was full of tiny fish in shallow water, a bunch of green leaves were stuffed into the bucket to keep the sun off them. The river was strewn with litter, but when you're poor, you've got to get your food where you can.

Getting out to a more rural area, we came to the Bamboo train as described earlier. There's no station, just a meeting point on the track where locals have set up stalls selling t shirts, scarves and other tourist memorabilia. It is called a train, but apart from being on a railway track, the noris (carts) do not bear any resemblance to a train. Each nori is seprate from the rest, having it's own motorcycle engine and man 'driving' it. The wheels are similar to a weight lifter's dumbbells, and two sets of 'dumbbells' are placed apart on the tracks. The 'railway' men then lift the flat bamboo platform onto the wheels and it sort of clips on, the engine already being attached one end. There's a belt from the engine that connects to the wheels and that's it, apart from a few cushions for us soft tourists. There was one train driver and four passengers.

So after revving uo the engine we tootled off one by one. Now I've been told that these 'trains' can go up to 40-50 km per hour, but we didn't go that fast, thankfully. It was quite rickety and being flat, there was much scope for falling off.

The track was straight enough to make a Roman jealous and was generally surrounded by tall bushes and trees. Butterflies and dragonflies fluttered about and we spotted quite a few huge spiderwebs that often connected across up above us with gigantic spiders squatting in the middle. An occasional break in the foliage gave us a window to see people working in the farmlands and pools of water. We rumbled over dodgy looking bridges that had no walls to them, so you could see directly downwards to the small rivers below.

After 20 minutes journey, we stopped 7km up the track. Surprisingly (not) we found people selling the usual stuff, but Glyn and I did succumb to buying souvenir Bamboo train tshirts at $5 each. I also bought a few scarves as presents. Nin took us up a dirt track to see where bricks were made.

The return journey was back the way we came, this time Glyn and I sat on the front as Helen and Andy were on the front on the way up. By this time the clunking and bumping was gettting a bit tough on the arse and bones. Our driver silently stopped (stopping is done by turning the engine off) to pick up a passenger who also didn't speak, she'd just stood on the edge of the track and she hopped on the back, I think she was a worker from the fields. This turned out to be a bonus, as when we came upon a cart coming in the opposite direction up the single track, we had priority. So we waved smugly as the tourists who'd had to not only get themselves off the train, but get their train off the track!

Upno our return, I used the 'loos' at the 'station'. Possibly one of the worst I've come across in this country although there has been some stiff competition. We got back to our bikes, one noteworthy thing is that we've never had to lock our bikes, no matter where we've stopped. This is something I would never risk doing back at home.

The cycle back was gentle, with a brief stop to photograph the orange clad monks as requested by me. This was at a very ornate place, with the monk's orange washing hanging out to dry over the railings. The only monks around were children and I motioned to ask if I could take photos, one boy was so shy but his mate pinned him down for me. They do find it strange that I want to photograph them, but still are very obliging.

It was getting dark as we returned our bikes, and we strolled back to our hotel, loosening off stiff limbs. After a very quick dip in the cold pool that was making us numb, we made our way to a pizza place.

Now I know that we should be eating Cambodian food, but I've not had too much variety and I craved something else. To be fair, it was a Cambodian pizza place with Cambodians eating in there. The service was awesome, but they only had one can of beer, so they had to send someone out to the shop for us.

By the time I got back to the hotel, I was totally bushed and slept like a log until 5.30am, despite there being a very loud wedding outside that started at 3am.

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Photos

Bamboo Train
Cambodia

Train driver
Bamboo train, Cambodia