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Published: January 29th 2012
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Mountain that needed to be climbed. View from bike ride.So, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, so I’ll try to get you guys up to speed on my life here in Battambang! We last spoke before my first full weekend here in Battambang, and I wanted to do some touring of the local area. First off, I’ve attached a few pictures of my place, from outside the gate, and outside my room, the pictures of the inside were in my last blog.
My first Saturday in Battambang I took it a bit easy, Mr. Kun, the owner of the guest house took me for a drive around Battambang, to show me some places of interest and to a coffee shop where we spent a couple hours talking about culture, people in Cambodia, relationships in life, among many other great topics. I must say Mr. Kun and his family have been absolutely wonderful in making me a part of their family, as well as making sure I’m comfortable and safe at all times. I come home each night to a big bowl of local fruit, which is amazing by the way. One day I’ll have to dedicate a blog just to the types of fruit here, probably in
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View from the gate. March when the new wave of fruits are ripe, such as the mangoes which are in the masses! So I spent most of the day and afternoon with Mr. Kun and his family, and also spent the evening with Mr. Kun at the gas station for beer and food, and continued our talk about life. I agreed to help him with his NGO and help promote his newly built guest house, in exchange for hopefully a cheaper monthly rate.
Sunday I decided to make the journey to Phnom Seampeau. So, as you all know Cambodia has had a very tragic history, in terms of the Khmer Rouge and you may be familiar with the killing caves. The killing caves were caves that the Khmer Rouge used to use to dispose of bodies. They would slit someone’s throat and throw them down a deep, dark cave. We were able to see the bottom of the cave, as it has since been dug out, and there were skeleton bones everywhere, and were split up into two piles, adult and children. There was also a temple down there, for the people that were still alive who wanted to pray. Another interest fact,
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My little unit. the reason why Cambodia has been in such rough shape since the regime left is because the population is extremely uneducated. During the regime, the Khmer rouge killed all the educated people first, leaving only the uneducated, who agreed to slavery much easier! I was told it was an easy bike ride down the main road, about 10-15km. Well, it was closer to 17km in the blazing heat, and quite the bike ride. To make things worse, when I got there, the temple and caves were at the top of a huge mountain that I had to hike up. Needless to say, by the time I got to the top I had quite the work out. I read in my guide book that they the area was a resort, because a village of people live at the bottom of the hill and make a living off selling tours, food, and bike rides to the top. I read in my guide that at the top there are plenty of children who live there and speak very good English, so to employ one of them as your guides. I found a 14 year old boy named YO who was very informative and
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Wat along the way to killing caves. knowledgeable about the history and the sights. I gave him a tip at the end to go towards his “English education”. There were three main sites at the top of the hill, the caves, a temple for the Khmer Rouge to pray, and a giant Buddha statue. The view from the top was spectacular, as I got a bird’s eye view of rural Cambodia, quite beautiful.
I then drank some coconut water and prepared for my trip back in the blazing heat as that evening I was to spend some time with Mr. Kun and Tevin, at the local gas station for more beers and food, where I tried cow intestines. Not bad, pretty chewy. I had a great first weekend in Battambang, got a little bit of everything packed in there.
My week at work was a little less eventful, I had an interview on the Tuesday at Pannasastra University to teach Level III accounting which was successful, although I can’t really call it an interview, it was more of a confirmation that I was educated with a business background and work experience in the industry. So as of February 8
th I will be a University professor,
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Big Buddha. teaching Accounting two nights a week at one of the better University’s in Cambodia. The education system here is interesting, it’s a mix of public and private and I’ve met quite a few English teachers here who are critical of the system, but I think I’ll have to save that for another blog, probably when I start teaching myself.
I met a fellow traveler from the UK who was in Battambang for a few days while having a happy hour beer at one of the riverside café’s, Café Eden. He also quit his job back home in London, and was near the tail end of his 10 month trip, having spent time in many of the counties I plan on visiting over the next year. His favorite place was Burma, which is a place I might have to try and squeeze in somewhere, as he is the second person to tell me Burma is the best travel destination they have ever visited, the other came from my very well travelled cousin-in law Kiran. We made plans to go to the circus at the orphanage, a very popular destination for tourists, as it is considered a must see in all
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Skulls and bones. the tour books. A group of French people came to Battambang, and opened up a school for orphans, and they ran an art studio and circus, which have different shows 4 times a week. The show we went to was Five styles, a mix of all the shows. It was $8 for a ticket, and included a welcome drink and entrance to the art gallery. The show was amazing!! These kids were great, and extremely fit. At the end of the show they explained that the kids apply to the Cirque de Solei school in Montreal and every year at least one or two get accepted, so they ask for more donations at the end of the show to help finance these kids in Montreal. This experience was an eye opener to the amount of French people, and foreigners who were living in Battambang, I’d say half the audience were from France or Quebec. The circus was a great experience, and I hope to see another show in the near future.
After the long work week, it was time for some more exploring and discovering on the weekend. Fridays I am usually dead tired, as I am still adjusting
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Hole to cave. to the 7:30 to 4:30 work days and ended up falling asleep pretty early. On Saturday, I found out about the Battambang Google group, which is used by foreigners and ex-pats to communicate events and activities going on in Battambang. So, on the Google group I saw a posting for a local art exhibit, which was having its opening that night at one of the art galleries in the city. So I went to the opening, and it was great, very cool art here in Battambang, and the industry is growing like crazy here, more on that in a bit. At the showing, I was given a flyer for another art gallery just down the road that does a “Make Light” show at 7pm followed by a film night. So I made my way over there for 7pm, and it was wonderful. The studio was called Make Maek, and had great Hindu influenced art. The light show was a big piece of art made out of material which lights on fire, and a group of people and local kids from the community lit the entire piece with sparklers! I wish I had my camera to capture this event, because words
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More skulls and bones. can’t explain the expressions on the kids’ faces, it was priceless. The film at movie night was “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion” and it was great. It was a film about the violent relations between Tibet and China, the Dalai Lama, and the future of Buddhism in China, and the world. Anyways, the film was really good; I’d recommend it to everyone, very informative and sad. I’m happy I discovered this art district, as I think I will be a frequent visitor and member of the art community.
One day, I went to a Buddhist temple next to my work. I spoke with some young monks, and learnt quite a bit about the monk culture in Cambodia. I didn’t know that monks were all the poor children in the neighborhood who couldn’t afford schooling, and by becoming a monk, they would get free education provided by the Cambodian government. This included University as well, as there are monk dedicated schools at each level. I really want to learn as much as possible about Buddhism, it’s very cool to live in a society where Buddhism is the main religion.
Ok, next topic is a very frightening event that
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Temple at top of mountain. happened to me one night. I was riding my bike home at around 10PM, and there was a youngish kid, maybe 16-18 years old running down the river next to me asking me to stop. So, I stopped, and he pointed to the back of my bike, where there was a little seat, so I thought he wanted a ride. I said sure, and he jumped on, and I headed towards my area, he then pointed in a direction, and I assumed he was telling me how to get to his house, which was still on the way to my place, so I listened. Then, the roads were getting quieter, and darker, and I thought before this guy leads me to a place with a group of people who’ll rob and kill me I better let him off. I slowed down my bike to let him off, and as I did this he reached his arms around my waist and grabbed at my dick. I freaked out, skidded my bike, and he jumped off and ran away yelling “THANK YOU!” So yeah, that was a terrifying experience, I’ve never been harassed by a young boy before.
The following weekend
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Cute monkeys. was quite interesting as well. Friday night I was invited out by a co-worker to his place for drinks with his friends. His family owns a curtain company, and he and his brother live in the back of the store. So it was me, my co-worker, his brother and a bunch of their friends. After a bunch of 8% beers, we started talking about politics and government corruption, and I learnt that Cambodians are very fearful of their Prime Minister, who has been in power since 1985 and comes from Vietnam. They mentioned their government does everything to favour Vietnam, and basically fuck over local Cambodians. The election is in 2013, and the leading opposition, the head of the labour union, was recently assassinated, which is not very encouraging. We didn’t talk about it too much, just in case someone overheard, then their own lives would also be in danger. Another interesting note, I mentioned the story of me being sexually harassed, and they quietly sat there, and one of them said ‘you should have tried it’ in an awkwardly serious tone.
That Saturday, I spent my morning at the Smoking Pot for their daily cooking class. It was
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View of rural Cambodia. lots of fun, the day started off going to the market to buy all the ingredients, and the market was awesome! I now understand the term ‘fresh fish’ as there were literally fish flopping around all over the place. We picked our fish, and then a nice lady chopped it up for us and stuck it in a bloody bag, with the fish still squirming around. The market had quite the variety; skinned frogs were available, as well as live snakes that were swimming around in a bowl, not to mention the live turtles. We spent an hour there then back to the restaurant for our cooking class. We made 3 typical Khmer dishes, Beef Lok Lak, Fish Amok, and Basil chicken. The longest part of the cooking class was making the curry paste from scratch, which included about 20 different things that needed to be mashed up into a paste. The instructor was great, and at the end of the class we got a cooking book with about 10 different recipes. I’ll have to start cooking now, instead of eating out all the time!!
That evening I went back to Make Maek and watched an absolutely incredible movie
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Tour guide YO. called “In a Dream” which is a documentary about an artist from Philadelphia directed and written by one of the artist’s sons. The film was absolutely beautiful and amazing, I recommend it to all, and had a great soundtrack headlined by “The Books” and “Explosions in the Sky”! By the way, I’ve downloaded the new “The Books” album and it is fantastic, worth a MySpace listen at least. At the end of the evening, I was talking to the owner of the gallery and Renaldo, who is a Peace Core worker from Texas, and they’ve asked me to help them run the business side of the art gallery, as they all have art backgrounds, which I was more than happy to accept. Art in Battambang is booming, in December of 2011 the New York Times wrote an article on Battambang and it’s growing art scene, and since then people are specifically coming to Battambang to check out the art, and Make Maek will be hosting a German short film festival with directors from Germany coming down to be a part of the festival. Very cool, and am so happy to be a part of this.
Sunday was Chinese new
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Circus stage. years, and widely celebrated across Cambodia. Tevin, from work, was kind enough to invite me to his house to spend Chinese New Years with him and his family. I biked out to his house that day and had a nice low key lunch outside, and did a small prayer to celebrate the year of the dragon. I then spent the evening portion of Chinese New Year with Mr. Kun and his family at the guest house. Ate lots of food, ate some tangerines, and watched some Chinese fireworks and dragon dances, to cap a great, first, Chinese New Year celebration.
That’s all for now folks!! I have so much more to write about this week but this blog has been long enough and I’m starting to get lazy, and don’t want to skip out on any details. Thanks for reading, I hope you find my blogs somewhat entertaining and thank you so much for all the support I’ve received from my friends and family, I love you all so much, and miss you guys!!
Until next time…
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Aileen
non-member comment
Keep the recommendations coming! I am enjoying this blog and hope to trace your steps myself one day in the names and places you've dropped here. Keep taking care of yourself over there, sounds like Battambang has so much to offer :)