Battambang and about

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What a full on day. Nit picked me up in his tuktuk at 9.00am and I was joined by Franco who is working for an NGO in Phnom Penh. Our first stop was the bamboo railway about 6km out of town. Each train consists of 2 sets of wheels (bogeys?) And a bamboo platform that seats about 6 with a little motor strapped to the back. It jolts along at around 25km/h on rickety tracks for about 30 minutes to a little village and then they dismantle the train, turn it around, and back you go. If you meet a train coming in the other direction the one with the least passengers stops and dismantles their train to let the other past then puts it back together and away you go again. From there it was a slow drive through the countryside stopping at a swing bridge and a fishing village where small fish are caught and dried in the sun to make into fish sauce. Having seen the process I will never use fish sauce again, think clouds of flies. Next stop was just a photo op for a bunch of fruit bats hanging in trees and then on to Wat Banan, a group of Hindu temples that predate Angora Wat by around 200 years. There are a lot of steps to climb to get to the temples but its well worth the trek. From Wat Banan it was back to Battambang to visit a crocodile farm, 400 crocs waiting until they hit 30 years old to be turned into handbags and shoes. Grabbed lunch in a vegetarian restaurant, the usual meal sans meat but at the same price, then it was out to the killing cave where the Khmer rouge disposed of several hundred people they didn't like by tossing them into a deep cave from a great height. Stopped on the way to make up for the lack of meat at lunch by chowing down on bbq rat, very tasty. Our last stop for the day was a bat cave where just on dusk several hundred thousand tiny bats stream out of the cave for a night's hunting and partying. For us it was back to town where Nit and I went to a Khmer restaurant for dinner.

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Comments

[Lisa]

One dodgy critter eaten. Looking forward to more stories!