Battambang
Trip Start
Oct 30, 2005
1
50
122
Trip End
Ongoing
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Battambang,
Cambodia
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Upon arrival, we were besieged with moto and tuk-tuk drivers wanting our business. We had chosen to walk as our accomodation was not far, although we weren't exactly sure where we were on the map, and every time we stopped to get our bearings another moto would be at us "moto, moto..."
One guy in particular, wearing a cowboy hat, followed us from near the bus keen for our business and asked us "You from Eng-a-land?" we laughed and said no, Australia, and after a few attempts at getting our business he eventually left us alone. A younger moto guy was more persistant though and followed us all the way to the guesthouse, waiting for us to come out again. We avoid these guys the most, preferring to support the older guys or people who struggle with English and find it harder to get business. They also don't try to rip you off as much either!
We wandered around town for a while, it was quite small and didn't hold a lot of interest, so we spent a bit more time looking into options for the boat trip to Siem Reap, and took the afternoon easy. At dinner though, we did run into a French guy we met on our tour up to Bokor Hill Station near Kampot. He was travelling for 1000 days and 1001 nights, and was nearing the end of his trip, so we had fun sharing stories.
The following day we decided to get a moto driver to take us around the countryside, as we had no decent maps of the area to do it ourselves.
Ancient Temple (1)
Our friends from China (Deion and Lynise) were actually in Cambodia the same time, but ahead of our schedule and had told us they took a guy named "Soka" and he was great. Realising we had no easy way of finding this guy, except asking all the moto drivers, and also that he could well be out with someone else by now, we stumbled across the moto driver with the cowboy hat from the day before, and he came up and said "G'day mate!" - he had remebered us. Seeming friendly enough, we thought we'd give him a go and negotiated a price for the day. Christie must have had a feeling, as she asked Glenn to find out his name... Soka! The same guy. Amazing.And yes the trip with him was great. We toured up north visiting temple ruins, Khmer Rouge killing fields and pagodas, but the highlights were the rural villages where we watched rice paper being made, went to a rural distillery to try rice wine and came across local kids who had hardly seen westerners before as they were scared to come forward. We had a great time, and were told many stories about the life of the locals and also Soka's experiences living through the Khmer Rouge regime. He had actually been studying to be a electrical technican, but was forced to harvest sugar palm through the Khmer Rouge time. His stories were very interesting, yet sobering of the realities of what Cambodia has been through.
We made it back in the evening, said our goodbyes to Soka and got our tickets for the boat ride to Siem Reap. Temple town, here we come.
The next morning, bright and early, we donned our packs for the walk to the boat ramp.
Ancient Temple (2)
There were two smaller boats leaving that morning, from which we were to meet up with the fast boat when the river got deeper. During the wet season, the trip is only meant to take 3 to 4 hours, but we had heard from fellow travellers that it can take 9 hours with breakdowns! Unfortunately the boats were a little basic, and only one had padded seats, and no we didn't get that boat. Great. Heading up river, the boats struggled a bit as the river was so shallow. About 2 hours into the trip, the other boat decided it would break down, and so our already slow pace went to a crawl as we now had to tow the other boat. Ok, we think we have got the 9 hour boat!
Eventually we pulled up for lunch, some 5 hours later, where they attempted to fix the other engine. Needless to say they failed and ended up pulling out the engine and lumping it onto the front of our boat, supposedly for someone at the other end to look at it. Chugging along for about 1/2 hour more, we pulled off to the side and was met by the big boat, jammed packed with tourists coming the opposite way. There were a lot more of them than us on the two boats and those poor suckers were going to be more cramped than us. We eventually got onto the bigger boat, but only managed to get seats up the back, a metre away from the huge engine. And the driver seemed to love to rev the guts out of it each time he wanted to increase the speed, much to the disgust of Glenn's eardrums.
The river opened out onto the Tonle Sap lake, a huge lake which we had to cross to get to Siem Reap.
Bamboo Bridge
Finally, some 10 1/2 hours since leaving Battambang we arrived at the floating village of Chong Kneas near Siem Reap where our bum-numbing experience ended. Rather than arriving in the early afternoon, it was now late evening, and we struggled to find transport to Siem Reap, at least for a price that Glenn would accept. With our luggage, we opted for a tuk-tuk, much to the disappointment of all the moto drivers, but many were taken from people sightseeing on the river. We tried negotiating with a guy who had jumped on the boat to get business, but his price kept increasing as we wouldn't agree to go with him to the temples the next day - after all we didn't know if we wanted to yet... sleeping in sounded much more appealing after that boat ride.Glenn negotiated hard and got sick of his price increases so told him to go jump. Unfortunately at this stage, the sun was going down and all the other tuk-tuk drivers had gone. And also the moto drivers. Ooops. Christie was not happy.
As the sun was fading we walked back towards the boat to see if we could find anyone to take us. We finally found a moto driver who would, and he found another bike, so now we had to get on a motorbike each with all our luggage! Christie's driver managed to squash her pack in front of him, and she only had to wear her day pack, but Glenn's was too big and heavy do to the same, so he had to wear his on the back of the bike.
It must have been an amusing sight, but it was quite nerve racking experience as an overbalance of the bike wound mean the pack would be thrown off balance and Glenn would be falling with it! The ride was much longer than we expected it, but we finally arrived at our chosen accomodation to find... that it was full!
Great. Its now dark and we have to find alternatives. The moto driver said he knew somewhere, and us normally concerned about price increases due to commissions were ready at this stage to try anything. The place was really nice - a bit more fancy than we had been used to, but still reasonably priced, so we took it.
Now time to rest that sore bum!
