Battambang was the next port of call on Mads and mine grand tour of Cambodia. I have been to Battambang many times in the past year as it is one of the closest places you can get a decent burger and there are a few more VSO friends living there. I have never done the tourist circuit of Battambang though so it was great to finally get the opportunity to explore it with Mads. We spent Thursday evening at Phare Ponleu Selpak watching a fantastic circus show performed by ex-street children. The circus school gives the kids somewhere to live, teaching them and developing their social skills as well as the most amazing circus skills. There’s also an art school and music school on the same site. (Check out http://www.phareps.org/)
Friday was spent exploring what the Battambang countryside had to offer from the back of two very friendly motodops. The bamboo was definitely a highlight of our Battambang tour. Local Khmers have made good use of the railway tracks left from the French colonial era by constructing simple carts made from bamboo powered by motors which travel along until they meet another travelling in the opposite direction. When this happens, the cart with the lightest load or the winner of a game of paper-scissors-stone, takes their cart off the rails to let the other pass. We fancied ourselves as quiet a heavy load, what with two motorbikes and two barangs and reckoned paper-scissors-stone would be a synch! It was terrific fun to speed along the dilapidated tracks through the rice fields and the carts pick up quiet a speed. We didn’t meet any oncoming traffic but did watch a cart ahead of us unload their tractor and take apart their bamboo cart.
Next stop on the tour was to view the sleeping fruit bats eerily hanging upside down from trees in the grounds of a pagoda. Here we were introduced to an amazing plant which disperses its seeds by exploding after becoming wet. We enjoyed literally minutes of fun with these until rain threatened forcing us to abandon the fruit bats and seed dispersal fun and hop back on our motodops. We sped to shelter, trying but failing to outrun the storm clouds. After a brief pit stop our drivers thought it safe to brave the weather but they misjudged and we arrived at our next stop absolutely soaking wet!
We climbed the steps of Wat Banan (an Angkorian temple atop a steep hill!), fighting off well-meaning Khmer women brandishing fans to keep the out-of-shape barangs from losing consciousness on the ascent. We appreciated the temple at the top for a while safe in the knowledge that even more impressive temples awaited us in Siam Reap. At the top the view was amazing and really did serve reward for the climb up. We rewarded our descent with beers and a brief history lesson from our motodop drivers at the bottom.
We were not to be out-of-shape barangs for long; in fact we were just warming up really. Cambodia is a vastly flat country so we must’ve climbed up half the hills/mountains it contains in just one day! Next we climbed up Wat Phnom Sampeau. To view the morbid Killing Caves made famous by the Khmer Rouge in the 70s guided by an incredible 12 year old. Now I’m certainly not one to encourage child labour particularly if it might mean that child is not attending school, but this lad will go far. He had a very lucrative business set up whereby he used the money he earned from guiding people up the hill to put himself through private school. Well, that’s what he told us. He also asked us to pay him half way down the mountain and I think that was so he could pocket some of the cash himself and not have to hand over all of it to whoever was controlling his wages at the base of the hill!
The last and smelliest hill climb was at dusk. It was very carefully timed so that we ended up at the last hill at 5pm as at this time thousands of bats wake up and leave their cave dwelling at the top of the hill. This was truly a sight to see. Not only was the view of the surrounding countryside spectacular once again, the sight of so many bats flying out into the distance was breathtaking. Actually, it was literally breathtaking. We had to hold our breath for as long as possible for fear of passing out inhaling the stench that flew out of the caves with them. Words cannot describe how bad the smell was. The stream of bats exiting the caves all together resembled smoke wisping out into the distance and the photos don’t do them justice nor do they in any way convey the abhorrent stench we put up with for as long as we could. Yuk!
There should be a video coming soon but it takes FOREVER to load!
No comments:
Post a Comment