Battambang and its offerings

18^th November – Battambang and its reminders (please only read if you have a strong constitution)

Yesterday took its toll on both of us. I think the rush of adrenaline that lasted better part of 6 hours wiped us out and much sleep was needed. We decided to go under our own power and cycle out to see a couple of things that had intrigued me in my research of the area. The first was the abandoned, stuck in time Pepsi bottling plant just a kilometre or so out of town, it is as it was minus pilfering and now alternative living accommodation, as it was in 1975. According to what you read Coca Cola had Thailand sown up in the 1970’s and Pepsi had to bottle their products elsewhere so they chose Cambodia’s second largest city. When the Khmer Rouge took over the plant was closed, used for some time to make ice, then bottling of other products then closed as it is as the photos show. Slightly eerie but well worth a little cycle out to.



Our babies



forlorn

1000's waiting a dusty destiny

some caged

Onwards we went to find my second curiosity, however as with many things in Cambodia and no doubt the rest of SE Asia, brown tourism signs do not exist. I knew the road we needed to be on and the sign advertising ‘ILAM’ but not what it stood for as it was only a ‘if you see the sign you are on the rights track’ marker. We rode at a very leisurely pace for about 30 minutes without success but enjoying lighter bikes and gentle meandering.

We came across the production of rice sheets for spring rolls, an export of this area to the remainder of Cambodia but at $1 for 300 sheets it is an intensive and not overly rewarding activity. They are made from rice pummel which we now know we saw on our way into Siem Reap with the slightly medieval mortar and pestle contraptions. Here the process is made easier by the type of rice they grow. The sheets are placed on bamboo frames and left to dry in the sun and when you are in the middle of the jungle then finding the sun means as close to or on the road as possible.

We turned round at this point as a nagging thought of a sign I saw about 5 miles past kept coming back. We stopped for refreshments and G tried her best impersonation of the animal we wanted to find but to no avail. We reached the junction and sign I remembered passing and turned down the road. Ummm now where are they? 2 guys lounging in shaded hammocks were not what we were after but an exchange of signs, words and general arm waving saw a woman appear from somewhere with a key and we were let into the Crocodile farm. OMG what a pong! Now that may come across as a little lordy but seriously whiffy and no wonder. There must have been close on 200 crocodiles of varying size within a walled compound. You walked on concrete walkways about 8 foot off the ground, no guardrail, no signs warning of imminent demise, just watch your step where some of the concrete had fallen away over time. There were a number of pools of green and if you looked closely then nostrils and eyes were watching you keenly. A turn of a corner and there were the majority. Laying in the sun, some with dental records on display, some laying on top or across others but all very much awake and waiting.

They are not sold on as meet or skin, although there are big markets for both locally and abroad. These animals are sold as whole, live and by the kilo. It is such a shame that my pannier racks forbid me from loading anything over 40kgs or I might have been tempted ;-)

19^th November

I had read about the ‘norri’ and despite the best attempts of the various authors still not got my head around the concept of a ‘bamboo train’. Call me old fashioned if you will, trains are not made of bamboo in my very humble and obviously sheltered experience. We arrived by tuk tuk, driven by mr talkative and informative, at a village about 8km’s outside Battambang to be met with what looked like some very keen Cambodian rail enthusiasts.

The Bamboo train not only shows the inventiveness of the Cambodians at their best but also the pace and impact of change in Cambodia. The Bamboo train does pull tourists into the local area, it is a legacy method of transport which fits with the fact that all railtrack in Cambodia is single, unmanned and relatively ungoverned. So the concept of having a train that you can seat as many as will fit but light and simple enough to be able to lift off the tracks when another similar contraption approaches is actually genius.

The train consists of a 8x4 bamboo platform which sits on 2 axles and the rear axle is powered by a 6hp petrol engine and a rubber belt. That is it and it gets up to about 20mph which when sat facing the way ahead and seeing the natural beauty of the complete straight tracks feels like 80mph. You are given cushions on which to sit for show versus comfort and off you hurtle for what seems like an eternity but is really only 20 minutess with a  well-crafted 20 minute stop where there happens to be a brick farm to look around and all manner of drinks to consume. Then a ride back.

All the track in Cambodia is about to be updated and from December 2010 there is distinct uncertainty whether this quaint but absolutely needed form of transport between villages and work will exist. An Australian company has been successful in bidding for upgrading and installing an entire rail network in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge saw to its end in 1975.

Then onto Phonm Sampeau where the location of another killing ground of the Khmer Rouge is preserved. The Killing Caves require a gentle stroll in 40+ degrees up a very steep track and into the hills. On the way you pass by many shrines dedicated to those who were lost on this hilltop. The caves themselves are a stark reminder of what one human can do to another.

A reminder

Luck and fortune will be with us now



Naga's guard the entrance to the caves



Crocodile Mountain

Government Artillery piece facing Crocodile Mountain

 You also pass an artillery piece left over from this time with distinctly non perished tyres which does make one wonder. On to the collection of Wats at the top of the hill and whilst taking a well earned break and opening a packet of delicious crisps we were suddenly approached by a couple of very burly and intensely focused macaques who with the experience of years deftly lifted the open packet of crisps and delicately carried their new found food to beyond human height or dare.

One of the crisp criminals

This was my first experience of these creatures but not Georgie’s so heeding experience we moved out of the area and left the monks to feed the monkeys – I think they may have had some sort of unwritten deal. Steep stairs led to an area of cave like temples and whilst followed the entire time by two monks we were not dissuaded from our off the beaten track meanderings.

Once back up top and at the scene of the crisp snatching we saw the entire family of macaques had emerged so left in double time to descend from this infamous limestone outcrop and back to Battambang for lunch and to pack for the onward journey.

20^th November

We have decided to stay here for another day to continue the planning phase as much more is required to be done to move from one nation to another. The only distraction to much focused Ethernet activity is the wedding opposite the front entrance of the hotel. I am all up for music, dance, chanting and the balancing of drums on chins but after 12hours of listening my brain began to fry. Dinner at Ghecko’s was good but twinged my knee when getting my feet under table, hey ho only a couple of thousand miles ahead!

as it was in 1975

What a ride!

17^th November

5am alarm call and at the ferry by 6.30 to wait the arrival of our vessel for the trip across Tonle Sap, the largest lake in SE Asia, to Battambang. The wooden boat arrives, shallow bottomed, steered by a smiling captain and his 2 trusty teenage crew. It has a covered deck you step down into with wooden benches enough for 2 western bottoms to sit side by side. The loading begins, bikes are stripped and taken up onto the roof with the rest of the cargo of bags. There are around 9 of us on the boat at the time of departure. By the time we depart around 80! We are loaded, the boat rides low in the water but it feels strangely safe and reassuring as we move out of the harbour and towards the floating villages.

We are moving at pace through lily pad fields, round trees and submerged vegetation. I imagine it being a very different landscape in the dry season. The boat has a gentle sway, there are around 20 people sitting on the roof in the full sun of the day. I am so glad we left a little bit earlier to get to the ferry. It is cramped but at least shady.

We breakfast on baguette’s with our regular fillings and canned coffee which I now have a serious liking for and then settle down to watch the world go by. It is a world unlike any other I have seen, whole communities exist in this watery way, their animals also existing alongside them on smaller floating pontoons.

some homes are more basic than others

School

tesco's - sort of

Mobile masts and temples dominate the sky line, then the vegetation closes in and we are twisting, turning and swaying down what would be best described as c roads on Dartmoor but in an articulated lorry. There are times when you wonder how they know which one of the many openings in the vegetation is the right on to take.

Storks, herons, egrets, cormorant type birds, kingfishers and many others dominant the view.

The swaying is starting to get more, some people are starting to complain every time the boat slows to pick up yet more passengers. It must be like the local bus route and is used as such. The smiling policeman joins us, space is created to allow him to sit amongst an American family. Then the wise woman of the boat gets on complete with her 25kg gas bottle – whoop! She takes a place next to the captain and policeman and seemingly brings a presence onto the boat that was not there before her arrival.

The swaying is now concerning to many, the captain calls forward the crew member in the orange top, feet are moved and the deck planks come up. The bilge pump has stopped working, water is sloshing around a couple of inches below the decking and causing the boats stability to be all over the place. Repairs are made and for the next hour we chug at half speed to a lunch stop. I stepped off into the shop/restaurant just to stretch my legs. It was around 12.30 and in 2 hours we should be in Battambang.

The journey continues at pace now, we are still collecting passengers, but there are now stools on the deck for those wishing to come off the roof and have some protection from the heat of the day. The boat is now moving into narrower channels, we are stopping more often to squeeze past other water born traffic, the twists and turns are more acute, the debris from the trees on either side of the boat is now coming in complete with its insect life.

We then emerge into more tranquillity, either side of us river banks have started to appear and motorised boats are starting to become less as paddle power takes over. Fishing nets are strung across from one bank to the other and the journey becomes slower now as the captain negotiates this and slows as we pass children playing in boats or on the rivers edge. On the Thames as with many other rivers there are laws governing speed to reduce the size of the wake and damage it can cause. Here it is out of common sense alone that these actions are being taken. We are starting to drop off passengers, the monks at a nondescript building, the wise woman at a set of steps in the river bank, the young family with twins are off loaded beneath a road bridge. There is much more life either side of the boat now, motos are starting to be heard then seen, more cattle are being tended, houses are more robust in construction.

A fishing trawler unlike I have ever seen..includes home

The ferry dock is rudimentary but with many willing hands the bikes and gear is soon up the steps and we are reassembling for the short ride into town. The 4^th hotel is the one for us. Helped to get the stuff to the second floor in our first lift! The room is clean, aircon (for me) and bathroom lacks damp, cockroaches and a comb of dubious nature which has been many of the experiences to date. I am looking forward to sleep tonight. The boat ride was great but draining of energy. A quick fried rice meal at the hotel followed by a wander through town and Mexican ice cream dessert ( a bit like an individual apple strudel) at Gheko’s and to the hotel we returned. Tomorrow I hope we see more of Battambang but have a strange feeling that whilst it is Cambodia’s second city we may have seen it all this evening.

Catching up and Fashion

16^th November – Catching Up and Fashion

One of the things I had singularly failed to appreciate before arriving in SE Asia is the time it takes to update others on your travels via the interweb. When I started blogging in September of this year I did much of the work from home where a decent connection was readily available and upload speeds passable to enable text and photos to be communicated to those who wished to read about my various exploits.

Now in Cambodia this takes on a whole new level of challenge as the infrastructure to support much of what we take for granted in the west does not exist or exists but in a very poor state. Mobile phone masts are everywhere as are the advertising banners for Metphone amongst a number of others. Wifi and internet are used as major selling points of most cafés and restaurants. Facebook is everywhere on the screens you see in cyber land but coming from a virtually instantaneous service in the UK to click and wait a while is different. Why am I writing this, well I think readers need to know that in order to create one post it is taking 2-3 hours for both of us to do this. In the UK it would have been an hour tops. The connections frequently go down in the middle of uploads and the signal strength is very weather dependant. So we are running a little behind on updates but have decided to stay another day in Battambang to rectify this before we head off for 5-6 days of cycling towards Bangkok.

The 16^th November was a blog day, 3 hours over breakfast in the Red Piano for me to write and upload one post. I went for a quick shop and discovered yet another shopping centre, brand new and almost empty as was the experience in Phnom Penh. Shopping in a centre does not work in Cambodia. Too many of the population do not have the means to be able to purchase the inflated indoor prices and many others live by day to day existence. The same is across the country so the centre felt out of place although did provide the mini tripod I needed.

Bikes were cleaned in the afternoon, I was staggered by how many bolts had worked themselves loose on the pannier racks, should have done what I intended to do at end of day one and tightened them, but soreness and exhaustion meant I didn’t. Will learn, as I am every day.

Dinner at one of the small restaurants in the market, probably the best curry I have had since arriving and G’s shrimp Amok served in a carved out coconut shell looked as good as it tasted. The Blue Pumpkin saw more of our hard earned dollar tonight with a final email/blog session before moving on from this town to Battambang tomorrow.

Fashion, I don’t want to say much other than it has been fun to watch...and learn

Japanese Simon Cowell

Ahem, if I had had my fashion police siren it would have been on...loud!

Please please noooooooooooooo!

Assumption = Wedding Party @ Angkor Wat = worrying sock/shoe combo's nonetheless

Sunrise and Rose'

15th November

4.30am alarm call and out by 5.15am. Tuk tuk to Angkor Wat the most famous and most photographed temple in Cambodia. The sunrise was fast and beautiful which meant that we were in the temple long before most sensible human beings. The steps up to the highest point of the temple did take some deep breath requirements and a slow but steady journey down.

Canned coffee for 4.30am start

This is a lived in and working temple

Bas-relief detail is astonishing

and this was just one wall of the above

Now these ladies tell a story - reserve of the highest in society

Onwards to Banteey Srey or the Lady Temple, about 20km away. So different, small in comparison not just in terms of size of temple but doorways and window arches. Surrounded by a moat and the stone of a different hue and colour. Carvings far more intricate and the rain when it came a welcome relief.

Difference in detail from Angkor Wat is stark, red sandstone versus limestone and lacerite

Now that is what I call reinforcing!

 Dinner in the evening stretched out with a bottle of 2008 Rose' which was a treat for both and a great temple antidote not that one was really required.

Wowzers

If there is such a word then it is aptly used for this post. Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm (my favourite so far) Banteay Kdei and Sras Srang have all been visited today. Almost indescribable but I will give it a bash. There are a number of strands to this so if it reads as random as the thoughts in ma heed then ce la vie.

Majestic, breathtaking, awe-inspiring, wonderment, amazing, puzzling, exceptional, stunning would all be adjectives that would still be missing a little something extra to be able to do justice to the complexity, intricacy, grandeur, design, artistry, of what we have seen today. It has been one of those days where everywhere you look, you see something different.

The light, the dark, the shadows, the hot, the cool of each temple has been so different, and reflects in itself the emphasis each King placed on its creation in worship of Hinduism, Buddhism and/or as a capital of the Angkoran Empire. Created from 800AD to the middle of the 14th Century, lost to time til the mid 1800's and still more discoveries in 1914. Restoration started, then stopped frequently and ended all together from 1975. It is now getting some of the funding required but in terms of enough or the right type you can see it is woefully lacking. Many governments are contributing to the renovation of the temples and signs proudly display what India, Switzerland and France are doing. The French have some history here being the original rediscoverers and also pillaged many temples to enrich French culture!

It has been hot today, we have consumed amongst the ruins, stone staircases, carvings and paintings a vast quantity of water, far more than the hottest day cycling. The steps up to many of the temples are crazy steep, the steps down pant trembling. The views are spectacular and the sounds of the jungle are intriguing and mildly painful on the neck. The sounds of the hawkers and sellers of trinkets, drinks and anything sir or beautiful lady would want are persistent in nature. Troy whom we met at our last temple of the day being a great example of persistence, cheek and humour paying off. G and I tried many different nationalities on today to throw these children off the scent of 'dollaaar' or 'candeeeeeeeeee' but their knowledge of the world population statistics, world leaders and capital cities is as surprising as it is worrying. If they get it right they expect you to buy and the more creative challenge you to test your knowledge and if you get it wrong you buy.
Liechtenstein and Ulam Bator are the ones I am going to try tomorrow - surely they cant guess and get right the statistics on those, however I have a feeling I may yet again be outwitted.

This is commercialism on a small but for Cambodia, significant scale. Without tourist dollars then the children dont go to school, they dont learn and there future is bleaker than it should be. This is a happy nation despite what it has been through, the hello's continue, the persistence of questions is relentless without being over bearing, the smiles are infectious and the laughter of all ages memorable. I like Cambodia alot and hope that having started my journey here then it will continue to be so through the remainder of SE Asia.

As I have mentioned and dreamt about, Tomb Raider was filmed in parts of these magnificent temples and when moments of peace descend and the snapping of Japanese tourists ceases albeit briefly then you do really start to feel like an adventurer. I can only imagine what it must have been like to discover after 400 years a lost Kingdom such as this. You are a naturist not an archaeologist and your eyes must be playing tricks on you. However the desecration, vandalism and destruction that happened in the mid 1970's has left its mark. Many if not all of the Buddhas have no heads, knocked off by both the misinformed and the malicious.

As we wandered on ramparts and through archways reinforced with wooden supports I imagine a member of the UK's HSE on holiday here. They would have not been able to move without serious palpitations.

This complex of temples cannot be appreciated in a day, no matter how early you wake or return. It is open from 5.30am to 6.30pm but believe me you would be selling yourself and your soul short to not come back. So tomorrow is the sunrise at Angkor Wat. 4.30am start, ummm making sandwiches tonight to keep G both awake and slightly less grumpy. I cant wait!

So today is summed up in the following pictures...