Blogs from Battambang, North, Cambodia, Asia - page 22

Donna and I took a nine hour boat ride from Siem Reap to Battambang, Cambodia. According to the Lonely Planet guide, this trip can last anywhere from three hours to eight hours depending on the water level. We assumed that since we were travelling during rainy season we would be fine ie: the ride would take 3 hours.... As it turns out, 9 hours later, the reason it took so long is because they no longer use the "fast boat"....oh well. The boat ride did end up being nice though...especially the last 1/4 of it....lots of beautiful scenery. So we arrived at Battambang to at least 20 different touts trying to get us to stay in their hotel. After checking out a couple of hotels, we ended up choosing the Royal Hotel because it had ... read more

My next destination after leaving Siam Reap was a small city called Battanbang, I was a little sad I was leaving all my friends that I had been traveling with for the past few weeks and now heading of on my own again. The journey to Battanbang was like every other journey in Cambodia, very bumpy dusty and extremely hot (about 38 degrees). The bus had no air conditioning so all the windows were open so that meant that every time a bus came the other way everyone inside of our bus was covered in dust which happens to stick very well to your skin when you can’t stop sweating! Also on the 6 hour journey the bus broke down twice and the drive had to jump out and repair it on the side of ... read more

If the first weird thing I saw in Laos was a wild monkey in the middle of the city, in Cambodia I was surprised to see people walking in pyjamas in the middle of the day. It seems to be a totally acceptable outfit here - the more teddy bears or cartoon characters in the pattern the better. The overland journey from 4000 islands to Siem Reap wasn't an easy or short one. On the first day the trip included four bus changes (for the reasons unbeknownst to me - all the buses were more or less similar) and took 11 hours. Most of the people from the group were going to Phnom Penh, just a Chinese girl and me were dropped off in Kampong Cham where we stayed overnight before continuing another five hours by ... read more

The trip to Battambang was a further confirmation of the direness of Cambodian transport. The "free pick-up from the guesthouse" turned out to mean a walk to the bus company's office, from where we had to grab a lift on another bus to the main bus station, wait there for 45 minutes, then get on the Battambang bus. Which promptly drove back to the bus company's office. Roughly 5.5 hours of non-aircon existence followed, with a miniature dust storm coming through the open windows. The first two thirds of the ride were essentially on a dirt track that just happened to be the width of a road. Potholes and ruts punctuated the surface, leading to slow, frustrating, uncomfortable progress. Arrival in Battambang was marked by a cavalry of astonishingly persistent motorbike-mounted accommodation touts. A couple of ... read more

Looking from Aranya Prathet in Thailand to Poipet in Cambodia you could see the enormous casinos in the distance. We had heard about these super casinos which exist because Thailand has banned casinos and it's residents venture to adjacent border towns to satisfy their gambling cravings. What the four of us (Ben, Andrea and ourselves) were not prepared for was the trauma of the next 3 hours and the most difficult and worst border crossing that we have done! Poipet is described as the cess pit of south east asia by Lonely Planet and for once LP actually got something right. Before we were even across the border a variety of scam artists approached us. Some posing as official immigration officers, others as free advisors for tourists (yeah right!). Having brushed these guys off by Donna ... read more

Sunee Seday shiny little followers of the light So we've been in Cambodia for three days, and besides becoming attached to Angkor beer, available in large Quart sized bottles for stupidly low money, we've seen some crazy crazy stuff, and insulted all manner of locals, fellow tourist diplomats, and i think a monkey. We landed in Phnom Penh, and for the first two nights in this crazy cool spot we decided to drink ourselves into a stupor and wrote down notes of what we saw. Actual extracts include; Dear God its hot Sweet merciful Allah its hot Buddha already new its hot, its why he's taking a power nap half the time Beer is awesome Beerbitch used to be cool, that mans changed So we go out with some tourist people, and decide to drink ... read more