This is a Chinese burger
I took a coupleof pics on the journey and here they are
All I saw was lots of fields with water...and
Rich vegetation
Once we entered Battambang, a guy saw me on the bus (I was the only westerner on the bus.) and he must have ran 0.5km alongside the bus with a sign indicating the price of the hotels that he was advertising.Once I got off the bus, I was accosited by this guy and another guy who proceeded to redicul him for his lack of english (which seemed pretty good to me) Anyway, I told both guys that I wanted to find a place myself but this guy was really insistent , to the point where he followed me while I walked down the road. Eventually, I listened to him and he said he could give me a trip to the killing field close to Battambang tomorrow. This was cool, then he gave me a lift to the 'tomato hotel'. By the way, this is a cool place, If you stay in Battambang , stay here! The people that stay there and the owners are a nice bunch.
I threw my bags on the bed and went out for a quick walk about the town just to see if there were any interesting monuments. found a couple...
Monument to be found at the centre of Battembang
I am guessing this is not a holy symbol in Cambodia, just an ornament
This represents the ancient cats that roamed the streets many years ago
Sea serpent
Churning the milky ocean
A lot of imagery here
Anyway, as I unpacked my bags,I started talking to Ben from Bristol and his girlfriend Rhianna from Wales. They were going for a trek to the bat cave (apparently, 20,000 bats fly out of the cave at 4pm every evening and come back 12 hours later.) This sounded like a bit of an oddity and had to be seen to be believed!
The bat cave (not the one in the Batman series though)
Bats leaving in their droves
After visiting the caves, we decided to try out some of the local brew back at the ranch.
This is something called beer.
It tastes good, sometimes
The next morning, we all headed to a killing field, a place where they make rice paper, a scarf making place, a place where they make bamboo sticky rice and various drives around the country side. It was a cool journey ,although I had to get out once as the tuk tuk got stuck in the mud.
I even got the chance to plant some rice!
These 3 statues represent symbols of the 3 provinces (including Battambang) which were owned by other Countries before Cambodia seized them again
At one point, we saw a lot of paper strewn across the road, The tuktuk driver was telling us that it's custom to throw pieces of paper after a funeral of a loved one, especially if you cannot afford anything else.
Loads of paper like this one were thrown all over the road (indicating a funeral had just taken place (or a gust of wind had blown lots of paper in this direction) )
We paid a quick visit to the crocodile farm. There were a few stray animals there apart from the crocs though...
Quick kids, follow me! Some scary looking people have just entered the farm!
These crocodiles will not move a muscle if they are left alon.
If you throw water at them, they move for a second and then stand still again
Either that's a baby croc or someone has got giant hands!
Nice flowers on th way to the killing caves
One for the nature buffs
Rice paper (used for spring rolls)
close up of the rice paper
The woman creating the rice paper
spreaing the liquid on the drum and leaving it to dry for a couple of minutes
After drying , she hangs it up for a couple of minutes
This was the scarf making facility , a place where I was able to put my reliable focusing powers to good use!
Having a go at scarf making....
You throw the ball of fibre from the right hand side to the left hand side, then move the board at the bottom of the pic towards you such that it aligns with the other threads, then repeat from left to right
Bottles of petrol.
you see this all over Cambodia
Cool homemade bridge
Some snakes and turtles that were kept on a local farm
Women working in the fields.
Maybe, they need a little help!
The rice goes in the water ....which way again???
some lemongrass that was growing on the side of the road
Farmer taking his cattle for a walk
nice pic of a couple of houses by the river
Local boat by the river
Catfish by the side of the road
The killing field was stunningly horrible. 10008 people dies here over a 3.5 year period and they had the most horrific deaths that you could imagine. Sometimes, there chest was smashed with a hoe and some of the organs were eaten afterwards.
They were told that the U.S army were going to drop bombs from their planes so they congregated in this field and fields nearby where they were worked to the bone, raped and murdered. It's a shocking story so some of the pics could be hard to view. 
monument dedicated to the people who were murdered here during the 1970s pol pot regime
The skulls canbe observed if you enlarge the picture and have a look at the pieces of glass at the fonr of the picture
Close up
wow
This stuff is hard to comprehend
Torture methods used by the Khmer soldiers on thier fellow people
I am not sure what I can write here
After seeing this site, I was fairly stunned as I didn't know about the cannibalism here. I wonder how the soldiers got into a mindset to do this. I heard that they would have been murdered if they started to oppose the regime so maybe it was a fear thing but I dunno.
Anyway, I needed to clear the head so the best way to do this was food. Bamboo sticky rice seemed to be the way to go and as it happens, some people were making it on the side of the road.
Bamboo with rice inside , ready for eatin'
Peeling off the bamboo, just likee a 'nana
their was a bamboo train ride that we could take but it seemed fairly gimmicky so we passed on that one. Sitting on some moving bamboo is all the it's cracked up to be you know!
The bamboo train
I went for a jog around Battambang. The locals helped out by reciting the 1,2,3,4 and every kid I passed shouted out 'hello' (which is very common here.) The place itself is really laid back and I saw a few runners running between the 2 main bridges in the town. One of the joggers stopped to chat to me after I had finished my jog. He was a 71 year old guy who had been jogging 6km morning and evening every day for the past 20 years! That's some dedication!
I went for a cycle to the killing caves. On my way there, I took a few photos of random things that I observed on my travels. It was cool to take some shots as I cycled and it broke the monotony of peddling!!
As I was leaving the hostel, the old women of the family gave me one of her cakes..
Nice
I am not exactly sure what the woman is doing with the rope
You do not see many signs for this party
You see AN UNBELIEVEABLE amount of signs for this party.
Why is it that I wonder a bit about a party when the word 'people's' can be seen there.
For me, it usually means the opposite
This sign could be seen everywhere and as far as I could hear, It just encouraged motorists to beep their horns even more.
Signs depicting the past seem to be seen all along the road side
This is a Trough , Cambodian style
Nice view
I needed to shelter under a tree to stay away from the sun.
Walking up these steps in my economy flipflops is more difficult than expected.
I nearly lost them a couple of times!
View overlooking the land from the big buddhas viewpoint
View from a different angle
The man himself
This place contains a lot of forest!
There are a few houses dotted around the place also.
I had a look at the temple at the top
Half man - half lion
....before having a look at the killing caves. This was one of the locations where The Khmer Rouge systematically murdered people.
Image leading up to one of the caves
Taken from the entrance of the cave
Insence distorts the pictue a small bit. There are human remains in the dwelling at the back of the picture
View from the bottom of the cave looking out
Pol Pots army destroyed the statues but knocking off their heads
Light shining through the clouds
Taken from the Tomato guesthouse balcony
I cycled back home . When I got to the Tomato guesthouse, some guys were drinking. I sat down with them.3 Cambodians and 2 guys from the US (Michael) and Germany (Mark). One of the Cambodian guys worked in a restaurant so we went to his place.
At one point , the owner of the hotel came up to the Balcony where we were sitting and started talking on his walkie talkie.Michael was saying that betting on the weather was very common in cambodia.Lots of guys would go to the roofs of their buildings and look at the skies and bet....
a. if it would rain
b. what place it would rain
c. how much rain woul occur in the area.
I haven't a clue how the amount of precipitation would be verified though!
Michael also mentioned the Khmer way of cheering before taking a drink. Nobody drinks at their own pace.You have to click glasses before taking any sip of beer and the older you are, the higher you raise your glass.The Cambodian people did this without thinking.
When we got to the restaurant (Beat from Switzeland had joined us) they sat us at a table and 2 girls sat down.They stayed with us for the evening. We shared quite a few pitchers but it was impossible to get drunk as the waiters kept filling the beer glasses with ice and it really felt like I was drinking water.
Some lads playing traditional music at the restaurant
A typical Kymer meal
The girls appearing to stay for the dinner appeared weird to me. To be honest, I wouldn't mind if they were able to speak english but they couldn't yet still wanted to head to the disco.
I didn't like the way the beer kept coming to the table even though none of us ordered it. We went to a disco place and the beer was ordered before we said anything so I moved on as it felt a bit crap. Before I moved,I noticed all the guys on the dancefloor started moving in a circle when a traditional Khmer song started playing. When I say 'all', I mean the whole dancefloor. This was fairly funny!
After thus, I think it was time to move on, I had time for a couple more quick snaps before booking a bus to Phnom Penh. I had heard Phnom Penh is really dangerous at night. It will be interesting to see if this is the case and how the killing fields there compare to the one that I saw here. In any case, the family of the guest house wished me well ans sent me on my way. Longue and the rest of the guys seemed to take an interest in the guests staying at the hoestel and this was/is appreciated!
Man going about his business in Battambang
Follow the grass all the way to Phnom Penh
So hard to comprehend how people can do that. I'd say that was a tough visit.
ReplyDeleteHope you're keeping well