Battambang

I arrived yesterday to Battambang. There isn't much to see, but what I did was very nice.

I wanted to rest today so I took the local tour quite late, around 16:00, when the sunset is around 18:00. Nevertheless, I went on a motorbike with a driver (moto taxi) and he showed me around. The countryside is really close by and the tour was about traveling through country roads, passing fields and villages, and no other tourist in sight. Some of the roads were more trails than actual roads. All the kids around said hello to me all the time and low five-d me while I was on the motorbike (Why not high five? Are you nuts? That's something reserved for Shaq only!). We stopped by one house, walked through its backyard/field, ate loads of fruits (for a small donation of course...) and some rice wine (again!). Then we took advantage of the hammocks around. According to my guide, other than chilling out, the hammocks are used to sleep outside around April, the hottest month of the year, and for the babies, who can be "shaked" to sleep.

After that we went to see the bamboo train. I thought it was a joke, but it is a real thing, used by the villages to get to and from the city and the country side. The "train" is a wood platform, sitting on two hinges with wheels and a small engine connected to one of the hinges. When two trains come from different sides, the lightest one has to be deconstructed and constructed again on the other side. I didn't take a ride because it was too late for traffic back to the city and I had to chart the whole thing. So I just took photos and played some coconut football with the kids.

The guide introduced me to the term: "Cambodian snow", so now I have a name to what I'm covered for the last five days. If you haven't figured it out yet, it's dust.

Boat trip from Siem Reap to Battambang

Yes, again on a boat, again on a big, hot river. Haven't I done it before? Won't it be the same?

I took the boat trip according to Lonely Planet's recommendation for a scenic ride and it was so. The floating villages were more or less the same as in Vietnam, but I did find some interesting things. I've seen a floating school and a floating church. There were also interesting fish nets, with a huge bamboo device to put and pull it out of the water. The boat was also more comfortable than previous ones, because the benches had good padding.

Lonely Planet also wrote that the trip might be longer in the dry season due to the low level of water. But the Cambodians know what they are doing, right? Apparently they do (money?). Once we got to the narrow parts of the river the trip became annoyingly slow and the lack of wind didn't help much at the current temperature. The boat driver went slow while another guy used a row to push the boat away from the river's banks, not always with success. After a while we stopped and two pickup cars arrived to pick around forty people, with their luggage. So we were hauled eighteen people in a pickup all the way to Battambang. Not fun!

Happy new lunar year!

Today is the Chinese new lunar year and the Vietnamese new year as well (Called "Tet", same calendar). If I'm not mistaken this year is the year of the pig (mmmm.... pig... Steamed rice with sweet and sour with pork, mmmm....).
Not such a big party around here in Battambang, Cambodia, except for some fireworks and firecrackers exploding for hours. Not too many Chinese here I guess.