After the wonders of Angkor Wat, it was time to move on to the next destination. This my favorite mode of transportation thus far: the slow boat to Battambang; and what a phenomenal ride it was! The six hour journey through Tonle Sap Lake wasn’t the most impressive as far as bodies of water go but the glimpse into Cambodian river life was what impressed. Fisherman casting simple nets, kids waving, smiling and generally having a good time dancing as we passed by and my favorite was being mooned by these fun loving children. Or perhaps they didn’t like the slow boat disrupting their lives, who knows? Regardless, it was so fun to see kids (most of which were naked) having fun with us! I got the impression that despite the seeming poverty these kids lived in, they were happy, I can’t imagine American children being the same. The only down side to the trip was our boat scraping against the trees causing us all to huddle on one side so as not to get smacked by the trees. Although this was when Barry stopped drooling on my shoulder so I can’t entirely complain . Sorry to call you out dude but only getting one hour sleep the night before caused my new travel bud to miss half the trip.
Lonely Planet made Battambang sound so charming with the French provincial architecture. Lonely Planet, you lie! Cute enough town but nothing I’d write home about. Barry felt the same and the night life was virtually non-existent. We found a cute restaurant and ate on the balcony to avoid the street touts before heading to the supposedly happening Riverside balcony bar (where Angelina Jolie frequented while filming Lara Croft) and closed the place down (a new term for my British friend) at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night. Hmmmm, we decided then and there to take the next night bus to the party beach town in Cambodia.
I typically avoid tours like the plague but there wasn’t much of an option to see the surrounding villages of Battambang otherwise so we hired Soon, an English speaking guide to drive us around in his tuk tuk. Each village specializes in just one product and the whole family is involved in making it. First up: rice paper and rice noodles. Rice paper is made with very few ingredients just rice, sugar and salt, palm sugar is added if fried rolls are made and the sun dries it all, when it’s out that is. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a very sunny day so breaks were compulsory. Curious what they do during the rainy season, many more breaks I suppose. Next up: fish paste and fish sauce where all parts of the fish, including the bones ferment in this village for 3-4 months resulting in the loveliest of smells. And the strangest behavior I’ve seen from a monk so far: riding in a tuk tuk talking on his cell phone he stuck out his tongue at us! Huh? Wasn’t aware Buddha taught such things, perhaps the smell went to his brain ;-). And the last village we visited made bamboo sticky rice. Seriously impressed as to how resourceful these people are in utilizing bamboo, it’s in absolutely everything: cooking, food, furniture, housing, you name it, I’m sure they have a way to use it. But my favorite: transportation! We rode a bamboo train!!!!! Probably only went as fast as 20 km/hr but sitting on a bamboo mat powered by a motor and sitting so close to the ground was so fun! Even as we could feel all the bumps the whole 7 km we went to…well, nowhere really. Essentially it’s just a tourist trap to a village to buy drinks and visit a tiny brick factory where kids gave us a quick tour. Plus the train had only one track, so we had to get off our bamboo mat and let the others pass, now that’s efficiency ;-)
Off to explore a temple complex complete with killing caves. We climbed up to see the view and despite horrible directions, managed to find the killing caves and along the way passed by some monkeys, kids dancing hip hop trying to sell us their services as tour guides, and a little girl blowing us a kiss so cute!. We kept asking for directions to the caves and monks all gave us different answers. But I think Barry summed up our experience well: all directions could lead us to enlightenment, wish I had thought of that! The complex had many Cambodian Buddhas, apparently each country’s Buddha looks slightly different with Cambodia’s difference in the longer ears as they are better listeners. The cave itself was disappointing but then again we didn’t go all the way in, just took some pictures and felt obligated to tip as the monk by the entrance had a deformed face, I felt so sorry for him but the cynical side of me wondered if he was placed there to do just that. The cave has a gruesome history, of course, people were dropped quite a long distance into the caves to their death. The few minutes we were exploring we made a friend, a little boy maybe 3 years old in his pajamas pushing a toy truck the whole time staying so close to us he kept getting in our way, but how can you be upset with a little boy wearing red nail polish, wow! Probably the most random two hours I’ve ever spent. Back to our hotel/hostel to the rooftop bar area where I spent the remaining time until our night bus asleep in a hammock.
At the “bus station” waiting for an hour or so was my first sighting of sparrow….to eat! The birds were fried and displayed in the street vendors cart. Not what I wanted to eat at midnight but hey, maybe later. The night bus wasn’t too bad although I never really sleep so arrived in Sihanoukville desperately needing a nap. Tried to check in to the most popular hostel and they were full so off to a guest house right on the beach and in a great location next to the disco bar we ended up at each night. Wicked! Tranquility Guest house was the name, the price was right and even though it just had cold water, that’s all I wanted anyway. Two beds and only one fan so as Ben, our new British friend commented, we only had ½ fan and it was damn hot! But we barely spent any time in the room, why would we as the well, actually not so lovely but just ok Sihanoukville beach awaited us just outside our door! But as you can guess, one does not go to S-ville for the beaches, one goes there to party and it did not disappoint.
All I wanted to do was nap on the beach after the long night bus but as I was sitting in the middle of two English boys who decided to have the locals give them pedis and manis, this did not happen. Seriously, I’m the girl here, shouldn’t it be me? But no, all I wanted to do was sleep so when the lady was using my beach chair to get a better angle for these boys, oh wow, I couldn’t believe it! And once you use their services they bug you the rest of the time so I would not buy anything from them the whole week, I just wanted to rest on the beach and not be bothered but of course this never happened, the boys continued to get massages, etc. from them. What I did get from my time with Barry and Ben was a crash course in British speak. It all started with Jai and then my courses intensified with B & B. I had to stop them in mid-sentence a lot of the time as I couldn’t understand what they were saying. How am I supposed to know what a toastie is? And sorted is used instead of to figure something out. And I still don’t understand what knickers are, it sounds so old-fashioned, are they panties or what?
The biggest decision I made the whole time in partyville was what to eat for lunch and dinner and since I missed breakfast that made only two decisions per day. We had a few memorable meals: bbq on the beach with barracuda and the most memorable was the sparrow, told ya I’d have it later. We had to let our guesthouse know 12 hours beforehand so the staff could buy it at the market, surprising that someone doesn’t order it every night, right? It actually wasn’t too bad, basically tasted like chicken but a lot of work for the small amount of meat you got but at least we were spared from eating it like the local Khmer do: the head and all. Our meal looked like chicken wings basically.
So the nightlife I keep referring to. Avoid Utopia, please. It is a sad mix of prostitutes and very old mostly White men and very young mostly Asian girls. We all got a bad vibe so instead each night we frequented the dolphin shack on the beach, where we somehow managed to get free shots of the local Mekong whiskey, ewwww. And the buckets at JJ’s made me sick every night and hungover the next day but I continued on, great music and good fun peeps. It was a great crew with Grethe and Megan, two fun girls traveling together from South Africa and met up with Jean again from Siem Reap. Good times! S-ville is on the backpacker’s circuit and small enough that you keep running into people you’ve traveled with at some other point and even the same locals, who I even saw on my day trip to Bamboo Island.
I so wish I had more time at Bamboo Island! I only took a day boat trip with a stop along the way to snorkel. Ate more bbq on the beach and then took a short walk to the other side of the beautiful, peaceful island to find there is just one place to stay: in the bungalows or the dorm and just one place to eat. But the remoteness meant no touts bother you, you can actually relax which is exactly what I was doing until I heard some people shouting, I turned and there was a goat (found out later his name was, appropriately, Rambo) headbutting this guy forcing him to run into the ocean while his friends were taking pictures of him! So of course I got in on the action and the goat got too close and I freaked a bit then as the goat left started talking and what cool peeps: Sean is from New York about to move to Australia and traveling with his friends Kate and Gus from Byron’s Bay. I was so close to staying the night, skipping my ferry back to toutville and staying in peaceful beach bungalow land where the electricity goes out at 11 pm each night. But the realistic part of me won out as I had to get back to Bangkok the next day
And as tradition has it, it was another bus journey to write about. I was told it would take only 12 hours to Bangkok which would have given me enough time to chill for the day, rest and meet up with my friends Ali and Sirima from Seattle that night. But you already knew I wouldn’t have it that easy, right? The route changed to pass through Siem Reap on the nicest sleeper bus so very happy about that. Arriving into Siem Reap I was well rested so should have been prepared for the boiling tarantulas, they were selling them to be eaten, ewwww. And then the waiting and transferring began, I lost track of how many. One minivan took us to breakfast then a ride on a tuk tuk with the guy who almost fell out of his bed he was so drunk the night prior, to wait for another big bus. This bus went toodling along for quite some time, had an interesting conversation with Nathalie from Victoria, BC and then boom!! We go careening to the side of the road, flat tire! We all got out in the hot Cambodian sun only a few kilometers from the Thai border. The changing of the flat tire was surprisingly efficient, maybe only 30 minutes and then we were off again to another bad border crossing at Poipet, this one taking over an hour in the heat with all of our bags. Then the transfer to another minivan for 4 hours or so and I was almost home free, although 10 hours later than they said, a total of 22 hours of bus travel. So glad to be on terra firma….Bangkok, nice to see you again!
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