The real Cambodia
Trip Start
Nov 26, 2007
1
15
44
Trip End
Apr 17, 2008
Battambang,
Cambodia
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Battambang is a nice compact town. It has some old French colonial architecture which is nice. This was near the Khmer Rouge's last stand offs but the town itself seems to be relatively unscathed. What Id o find bizarre is the amount of mobile phone shops. There must be at least 200 in this town of 100,000 people.
The market in Battambang is a glimpse of real Cambodia. There are people making clothes and jewelry to order etc (its kind of bizarre for me to watch someone melting down gold in a grotty market. I bought some new flip flops as my Phuket ones gave up the ghost in Phonm Pehn - 'genuine' lacoste leather affairs fotr $5... I just wanted some cheap fabric ones but there were none. I think Cambodian men must have small feet as it was pretty difficulty finding some size 9's. Sounds great didn't it but after 30 mins wearing my nice new flip flops my feet were ready for the bin so maybe it wasn't such a bargain after all...
Went out for tea the couple of nights I was in Battambang with a really nice French bloke (Jeff) and a couple of Dutch chicks who keep lapsing into Dutch whenever you don't stay on their case for two minutes...a bit of a role reversal as traditionally its the French who don't like parle-ing le anglais...
On my second day in Battambang I went with a moto driver (they hassle you everyday with 'hey sir wanna go see something today') to see some sights. It costs $9 after several 10's of minutes of negotiation. This might seem cheap but given that the average annual income is less than $100/month I reckon moto drivers must be some of the richest men in Cambodia...Anyway we went off to see another mini-killing fields site. It was centered around a cave complex on top of which there was a temple. Now the Khmer Rouge weren't that into their temples and such like so they conveniently made the temple into a prison. I say conveniently cause if you have a temple/prison on top of a mountain with a massive cave underneath then all you have to do is first chuck freshly interrogated prisoners down into the cave and then go down and bludgeon them to death with bamboo sticks...what a good way to save bamboo...Anyway, it was quite interesting as this was the area that the Khmer Roughe made their last stand only a few years ago; it is always good to have ones eye's opened to genocide that has happened within our own lifetime. After the caves (well after I sort of had to buy lunch from the moto drivers friendly cafe - they will do anything to get money out of you in this country; I'm guessing he got his grub from free as long as bought something as at the next cafe he was slightly pissed off when I didn't order anything and he had to throw some money at the waitress) we went to Wat Banan (see photos link at bottom) which is like a mini Angkor Wat. Very nice and not many people around...that is apparent from the girl I met from Warrington at the top, after several far from engaging conversations about go karting and Ikea in Warrington I sacked it off as a lost cause.
One things that struck me as we rolled along through dusty dirt roads (including one which is the main highway to Thailand - apparently it has never been upgraded to tarmac as Bangkok Airways pay substantial bribes to the Cambodian governor as the Bangkok to Siem Reap route is one of their most lucrative!!), with Khmer Rouge style bandanas as facemasks, was the diachronism in housing. Nearly everyone lives in some kind of bamboo shack, however, maybe one in a thousand houses is a massive palatial affair (see pics). I asked the moto driver why this was and he said it was mostly government officials, he said this without any animosity as if it was just 'what goes on'. You do see real poverty in this country, although children apparently have been entitled to free education since 2002 you still see many of school age working in the fields, washing clothes in the river or fishing etc - went would you see a 3 yr old in the UK paddling a boat around the river at home, parents in the UK won't even let their kids near a 2 inch deep puddles these days. However, they do have 8 or 9 kids per family so life in generally regarded as more expendable than home. When you do see children at school though they look so smart and happy, always smiling and waving. So nice compared to the thugs in Manchester that tossed a half brick at my car from their play ground a few years ago. I do sometimes wonder who has the best life, the rich or the poor...
On the moto ride we saw foreign aid being given out by the Cambodian Peoples Party (why one earth Cambodians would still vote for a communist party after their recent experiences I don't know!!), most of which has 'Aid USA' labels. I guess someone in the US is feeling guilty about what they did to this poor country...
Why is Cambodian beer more expensive than Thai beer in the restaurants in Cambodia? I have no answer to that one. Not that it matters now that I am only having one a day in my post Sue detox (Sue by the way is now back in Porn!!).
Anyway, after 3 nights Battambang was done and it was time to move on. The ferry was at 7am so it was a nice early start. I wasn't on very good terms with the hotel staff after a discrepancy the night before about my perfectly good $10 note (from the ATM) being too old for them to accept. For the 1st time since I left GV I felt my blood boil and started to get angry but I controlled it and slapped down two very very old riel notes instead that they seemed perfectly happy with even though you couldn't even read the numbers on them anymore. But when we were checking out they gave us all a traditional Cambodian scarf (not in Kyhmer Rouge colours tho...) and some bananas for the journey. And then once I was on the boat some little lacky from the hotel sped down on a scooter to give me back the man bag and flip flops I had left for dead (intentionally as I no longer wanted them) in the hotel room. I felt really guilty so thanked him profusely. I was wanting to throw them to some poor kids down the river somewhere but (a) I never saw the right kids and (b) I had awful recollections of the Khmer Rouge and Vietcong using satchel bombs during the times of troubles and could just see me tossing a man bag loaded with flip flops causing some problems...
The boat journey to Siem (why is Siem in the predictive text of my mobile phone but not the dictionary in word?!?!) Reap was amazing. We sat on top of the boat in beating sunshine for 8-9 hours ( a true test of my Mediterranean complexion) wandering through floating villages and fishermen. When we got to Tonle Sap, the massive lake which dominates Cambodia and controls the flow of the Mekong) all the houses are raised 10m on stilts as the water rises so much in the rainy season. We even stopped in a floating cafe for lunch. I especially liked the toilet which was just a whole in the wooden floor boards with the river below. It does however break your heart to see Cambodians just throwing all their rubbish straight over the side into the river/lake. If there was any charity I would give to in Cambodia it would be the bin mans union (not giving to people here is hard as there are so many begging children and land mine victims; I have to give something but conventional wisdom is that the ones you see in the street are actually some of the best off poor people in Cambodia so there must be a more organised way...).
We arrived in the 'port' of Siem Reap (port meaning a raised area of dust above the paddy fields) to be greeted by loads of handy Tut Tut riders offering 'free' rides into town. We took one, it was free, the catch being that he wanted you to use him for 3 days to go to the temples at Angkor. But as I am intending hiring a bike and cycling this was of new use to me.
Siem Reap is lovely. Touristy but its quite nice after the 3rd world feel of the rest of Cambodia. There seem to be plenty people tp talk to and lots of book shops etc. And I got a new pair of comfortable flip flops - cost $7 but that's life and she wouldn't budge another inch. The hotel I am in is lovely - $8 for a room with fridge, hot shower (1st one in 2 months!!) and cable TV (much use for early night Simon - everyone thinks I'm a right boring fucker now slipping off to bed at 9 everynight but I'm happy with it and my biography of the guy whom the Killing Fields was based on).
Pictures Here.
