Battambang
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2007
1
181
219
Trip End
Jun 17, 2009
Battambang,
Cambodia
Friday, September 26, 2008
The road was mostly rough gravel and was undergoing an upgrade, as the many new bridges built along it had side diversions bypassing them. At each bridge water was pouring from the fields on our right hand side and running through the culverts underneath. We bumped along this dusty highway with many motorbikes, giving chances for the bike photo game and cars and heavy trucks and trailers carrying road gravel.
A 'comfort' stop after two hours and then onwards on the bumpy road, which regularly disappeared in a great dust cloud as we passed a truck coming the other way. We saw people fishing with nets in the fields or clustered round the culverts under the road with fishing rods.
Slowly the fields dried out, as we climbed slightly in this very flat landscape and after another two hours we stopped again. Less than another hour and we arrived in 'Battambang', a stopover in the middle of Cambodia's rice growing area. A quick lunch and then we were off on an afternoon of sightseeing round the area.
Our convoy of motorbikes and tuctucs left the town and went into the countryside, where the houses were an intriguing mix of new stone built down to single room shacks built on stilts on the river bank.
Road to Battambang
At a small house we saw rice paper being made, by simmering a crushed rice and water mix, pouring a plate sized amount thinly over a cloth sheet and then steaming it for thirty seconds. This was then placed on a bamboo rack and put out in the sun to dry. Cottage industry in action.
Next was a rice husking operation where a small, diesel engine drove several belts on a machine that separated the rice grains from the husks (used for fuel), husk dust (used to feed animals) and the rice grains.
On to a noodle 'factory', where rice mix was squeezed through a mould and then boiled and on to the 'fish paste' huts, with the reeking smell of fermented barrels of fish waiting to be crushed and packed. As we watched the fish process, a torrential rainstorm started and we sheltered, watching children playing in the puddles in the rain, wet through and care free.
After half an hour the rain stopped and we continued our ride. As we passed along the narrow streets and paths, children came out to wave to us and shout hello.
We turned off into the fields and down a bumpy track, where I quickly recognized a big new 'stupa', the monument erected to house the remains of the dead, which was filled with human skulls. We were in another 'killing field' site where nearly 11,000 people had been slaughtered. This region was hundreds of kilometres from our previous experience at Phnom Penh and yet the details of the atrocities that took place here were identical in every detail. It was a shocking reminder of how the whole of Cambodia had suffered in 'the war' and a rude interruption to the afternoon.
Our dinner was at the house of our guide, who had been a child in one of the Khmer Rouge camps. He described life then and how he had slowly rebuilt his life to become successfull. An interesting evening.
