From Siem Reap to Battambang

Leaving the port near Siem Reap with a nine hour journey ahead

Fishing folk who live on their boats

The water here is used to wash in, brush one's teeth in, fish in but it is also treated as a sewer

Cambodian cooking class in Battambang

Cooking class and two travellers from France

Seller with smoked edible bats on the Bamboo Train

This Pepsi factory, now derelict, supplied product till 1975 and the arrival of the Khmer Rouge

Late afternoon at the crocodile farm north of Battambang

The Battambang killing fields memorial

Nith, the friendly tuk tuk driver in Battambang

A MOTLEY ASSORTMENT of places visited are in these notes which cover the last two days. Left Siem Reap yesterday morning for a nine hour trip, by boat, which included mostly river travel. Because it is the dry season here in Cambodia, the trip took nearly twice as long as in the rainy season. We tired passengers arrived in the early evening and I got quite good accomodation after five nights of $6.00 sleeps, which hadn't offered much in the way of creature comforts. Last night I watched some BBC on TV, in my air conditioned room and enjoyed washing once more with hot water too. 

This morning I slipped into a Cambodian cooking course at the very last minute. The class  included a trip to the market to shop for the ingredients followed by us creating three dishes. They included Amok, a national dish which is a kind of coconut curry. Of course we ate our creations after cooking our way through the rest of the morning.

Having been given a cheap cell phone in Phnom Penh I finally discovered how to phone overseas with this new gadget. With this basic Nokia I was able to call Canada and Germany while being driven somewhere in a tuk tuk. The driver, a kindly soul named Nith, took me out to the legendary Bamboo Train, which is what has been salvaged out of what remains of the Cambodian national train line (Battambang to Phnom Penh). Now rickety wooden platforms on rail wheels, powered by 8 HP portable gas engines and a simple drive belt, have replaced traditional train travel, which had dated back to the time of the French colonial era. I ended up riding some 20 minutes on the narrow gauge track to the next stop, drinking something cold at a stall and then coming back again, hurtling unsafely over crooked rails that didn't always quite meet.

From here Nith drove me to a derelict Pepsi factory where I photographed industrial decay. The bottling plant had come to a dramatic standstill, when the Khmer Rouge arrived in town, in the Spring of 1975. The next stop was a crocodile farm where we were the only visitors. While Nith remained by the gate i walked around staring down into the large concrete pens. I have to confess that I didn't feel all that comfortable being observed, as a culinary item, by the large reptilian gathering. Alas, their future pointed towards shoes and handbags and so I could cry my own crocodile tears. On a graver note the tour ended at the local killing fields. Battambang was not spared the terror of the Khmer Rouge. After that Nith and i went to the local version of a pub, well away from Downtown, and shared a pitcher of Anchor Brand beer. This Cambodian brew was excellent.


All in all a very eventful day!