Battambang (day 4)

The next day, my Songyuan friend, my friend from America and I got up early and caught a bus to Battambang, Cambodia. It cost six USD and took about three or four hours. A shuttle picked us up from our hostels to take us to the bus and we met a really cool American girl that had been teaching English in Busan, South Korea and doing some post contract traveling. She hung out with us at all the bus stops and such and ended up traveling with us for a few days.

We got to Battambang mid afternoon, so we decided to do something relatively quick and easy. Also, as soon as we got there, I wasn't feeling too hot, so crazy things weren't on my agenda. We ended up taking a tuk tuk to ride the bamboo railroad. We weren't quite sure what to expect from the railroad, Cambodians had described it to as something that was made of bamboo and could rev like a motorbike but ride along train tracks.

Once we got there, it made sense. There used to basically be only one set of train tracks in Cambodia, so if you were going one way on the tracks and suddenly encountered someone going to opposite direction, basically about to hit you head on, you were SOL. And so came the birth of the bamboo railroad. These bamboo platforms with small motors serve as the railroad "cars"; they're really easy to dismantle and remove (think, two minutes), should an obstacle (or another "car") appear ahead on the tracks.

As a tourist, the bamboo railroad takes you on a really shaky 30 to 45 minute ride down the tracks to a small village where they make bricks and try to sell you stuff. Then it brings you back; viola, end of trip.

brick making area

All the jostling proved to be my downfall for the afternoon; I got off, walked about 20 feet and proceeded to puke my guts out. With like 20 Cambodians as an audience. I was feeling moderately better afterwards, so we went back to the hostel and then wandered around town. We checked out the river and watched some of the evening exercise classes.

Sliiiiight European influence.

From first impressions, we really liked Battambang. It didn't rely on tourism to survive like Siem Reap. It had its own life and culture, and the locals were fine with tourists coming in, but they only paid so much attention to us (which was nice).

That evening, I stayed in, because I was basically dying, and enjoyed the wonders of English speaking television (Grey's Anatomy and chick flicks only for some reason). I was quite happy to be comfortable in a pretty nice hotel for my bout of food poisoning. If I was destined to get it at some point, that was the best possible time. As we discovered the next night, the city shuts down quite early, so I really didn't miss much.