Of Bamboo Trains and Boat Rides
The bus ride to Battambang took forever. Well. Not quite forever. But a long time. I checked out of my hotel in Sihanoukville at 6.30am and arrived in Battambang at around 6.30pm. A long day sat in a bus. In the evening, I met up with Lakki who was on the yoga retreat with me. Lakki is working on a research project at a clinic in Battambang and so she knows the town. She took me to her favourite restaurant and her favourite bar. Sadly, they didn’t have her favourite beer, so we had to put up with ABC…
The next day, I arranged for an English-speaking moto driver to give me a tour of the countryside and sights outside of Battambang. Motos seem to be the main form of short range tourist transport in Cambodia. The tourist sits behind the driver of a moped, holds tight, closes his/her eyes and prays.
Our first stop was the bamboo railway. Back in the early 1930s, the French built a single track railway line to the South of Battambang. This was all but useless, as you could only ever run a single train on it. That is, until someone came up with the genius that is the bamboo train. Bamboo trains comprise five simple elements: two axles with wheels, a lightweight bamboo and wood platform, a small six horse-power engine and a fan belt. When two bamboo trains heading in opposite directions meet, all passengers on the train carrying the least weight disembark and the train is quickly disassembled. My “train” was carrying me, my moto driver and his moto, two train drivers (I couldn’t see why you needed more than one) and a young boy. The weight of the moto gave us priority at every meeting.
After riding the bamboo train along the rickety 80+ year old rails for a while and quietly laughing an evil laugh the five or six times trains coming the other way had to be dismantled, we disembarked and went for a pootle around the back streets (back pot-holed dirt-track lanes?) of the Cambodian countryside. This involved overtaking ox drawn carts, doing u-turns to avoid flooded roads, watching rice being harvested, crossing a one metre wide suspension bridge at speed as a cyclist crossed in the opposite direction, and stopping to see fruit bats in the trees outside a Wat.
After a while, we came to Phnom Banon: a hill that appears out of nowhere in the flatness that is Battambang province, and that is named after the temple complex at its summit. My driver rested at the bottom as I climbed the 358 steps to Banon, an eleventh century temple which allegedly inspired Angkor Wat. It was pretty impressive but a far cry from the image I had in mind of Angkor Wat. And, it turns out, a far cry from Angkor Wat. I really cannot see how anyone could claim that Phnom Banon inspired Angkor Wat, other than in the loosest possible sense: “there was this temple right, and someone saw it and thought ‘I could make a temple too, and I could make mine better.’”
After Phnom Banon, we drove to Phnom Sampeau another hill with a temple on top. A young Khmer boy with remarkably good English gave me a tour for a dollar and two even younger kids followed us around. The temples had been used a prison by the Khmer Rouge and prisoners were thrown down into a series of caves about half way up the hill as a cheap form of execution. Some died from the fall, others died of starvation, still others died when bodies landed on them. Steps have now been built down into some of the caves and the human bones have been brought together in a couple of open shrines. Cambodia’s recent history really is quite grim and they don’t make any effort to gloss over or hide the atrocities.
After the Khmer Rouge were pushed back from the hill, the new government forces installed a number of artillery pieces on the hill to target Khmer Rouge positions. Two of these are still there and you can clamber up to them. I’ve got some great photos of my guide and the two other kids clambering over the guns playing soldiers…
My moto driver then took me on another scenic tour of the countryside, coming round to the North of Battambang. We stopped off to see the outside of a modern and Western looking Pepsi factory that was shut down in 1973 and then visited a much more modest family workshop producing rice paper for spring rolls. My guide explained the process and how, on a good (sunny) day a family (a couple and their two young kids were working when I visited) might be able to produce 2,000 sheets worth about $10 dollars. Of course, if it rains, the sheets don’t dry and the family makes no money. The whole village made spring roll rice papers, so it was called Spring-Roll-Rice-Paper Village according to my guide. The guidebook calls it Pheam Ek.
We then moved on to Wat Ek Phnom another ruined eleventh century temple. This one was properly ruined. Large parts of the temple had been reduced to piles of rubble and there were ‘danger’ signs everywhere. Everyone else seemed to be ignoring them so I did too. After scrabbling up the rubble and entering the remains of the central temple, I began to understand the need for the signs. It was quite clearly about to collapse. I took some photos of some beautifully carved lintels that might not be around that much longer and got out as quickly as I could.
My moto driver then took me to a village where they made a sweet snack of sticky rice, black beans and coconut milk baked in bamboo. According to my driver, the village was called named Sticky-Rice-In-Bamboo Village. It isn’t in my guidebook, so I have no idea whether it has a real name as too. Then we visited a prahok factory. Prahok is a kind of fermented fish paste and a Cambodian specialty. It is made by mixing fish and salt and then leaving the mixture to ferment (some might say ‘to rot’) in big vats. It stinks. It is an essential ingredient in a lot of traditional Cambodian cooking and is also served on rice for breakfast. Westerners are generally unable to get past the smell, and I really cannot understand why anyone would think the factory might be a good place for tourist visits…
That evening, Lakki and I were again disappointed by the lack of Black Panther beer. She had words with the owner of the bar and is hoping that the issue will be rectified soon… This internet cafe serves Black Panther though, so I’m ok.
Today, I took the slow boat from Battambang to Siam Reap. I had heard that it was very scenic and several of the travelers that I have met had described it as a must. For my part, I had been on several scenic boat rides in Laos and wasn’t expecting much. I was wrong. It was great. If you ever get the chance, do it yourself.
The boat set out from Battambang at 7.30am. Most of the passengers were Western and a large number of backpacks were piled onto the flat roof. We all sat downstairs on uncomfortable wooden benches that looked like they had once been in use at a school. I spent the first hour or so gazing out of the window, watching life on the river banks as we passed through the outskirts of Battambang, dozing gently and trying to read (Kerouac, On The Road). After a while, I got my camera out and started taking photos of people waving from the riverbanks or passing us in small boats.
I soon noticed that that there were less and less people on the boat but didn’t remember anyone getting off. After a while, I realised that more and more people had been climbing onto the roof. I had just about decided to join them when the boat turned off the river into what looked like the riverbank. The driver was not entirely stupid. There was water there, but lots of vegetation too. There was a very narrow channel linking two rivers, too narrow for our boat really. The boat basically ploughed its way through for about half an hour, branches whipping at the sides of the boat and flinging spiders and grasshoppers on-board. Eventually though we made it out to the other side and I had a chance to climb to the roof.
Nearly all of the Westerners were there, lying in the sun and chatting in small groups. A Swiss couple who seem to be stalking me were there too. They had been on my bus to Battambang, shared my tuk tuk into town, stayed at the same hotel as me and, it turns out, are going to be taking the same flight as me from Siam Reap to Phuket next week. We chatted for a while and then I started taking more photos. There was so much to see.
We passed huge fishing contraptions that resembled giant floating bamboo cranes with a net. We passed floating villages, villages built on stilts and villages where every house has its own little crocodile farm. We passed fields of waterlilies and of water hyacinths, forested areas and open wetlands. We passed through the Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary (where we saw rare breeds of pelicans and storks and all sorts of other birds) and the great Tonle Sap lake (where we saw basically nothing). We saw blood red dragonflies (and yellow, blue and green ones too) and all sorts of butterflies. I took over 200 photos and only stopped shooting when my battery ran out. It was a really good day out. Much more than just travel from A to B.
I haven’t done much else today. I had lunch, wandered around town to get my bearings, sorted out my laundry, booked a tuk tuk to take me around various temples tomorrow…
Late afternoon, I had some time to kill so I went for a little wander around Angkor Wat as the sun set. Pretty impressive.
