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.

Cambodia (first impressions)

When I first flew into Cambodia, I changed my RMB at the airport and they gave me riel. This ended up being kind of stupid, because they also use USD in Cambodia. 4,000 riel = 1 USD and you're constantly doing the math, you can pay in a combination of both, and you'll often get change in a combination of both. I actually had a harder time using my riel than using the USD I accumulated.

Cambodia is a really poor country, that might have been the one thing I heard from my students when they heard I was going. But for being so poor, it was definitely more expensive than I expected. You can find a decent hostel for maybe 8, 9, 10 USD, which isn't much, but all things considered it was surprising. Food and such was actually more expensive there than in Songyuan.

Along with USD, I also found a lot more foreigners and a lot more English spoken amongst the locals than I was expecting. I can count on maybe half of one hand, the number of my friends in the States that I have ever heard mention going to Cambodia, or just mention Cambodia at all. We saw so many young, say college aged people, on our trip, and many retired couples as well. One would assume this is why there is so much spoken English. That part was a bit overwhelming for me at first. I'm used to not understanding and tuning out 99.5% of the things around me. Being able to eavesdrop on five conversations simultaneously is quite a bit to take in in contrast to that.

Along with all the foreigners, there is a lot of foreign food. I can't count how many days while I was traveling that I had banana pancakes. Real, western, banana pancakes. It was great. The French had a huge influence in Cambodia, and it was so nice to have that influence in the food as well.

One of the most interesting things for me though, was to see how Cambodia is both ahead of and behind China. For example, China is more developed and has a lot more buildings, but the buildings aren't built to last. Cambodia's are much fewer, but the construction is more solid and enduring, and you can find more older architecture.

Last but not least, I wouldn't be me if I didn't talk about the bathrooms. Siem Reap has primarily western style toilets, though we found more squatters as we moved on. What they don't have so much is toilets with flushers. Almost all of them (western and squatters alike) are manual flush toilets. There would be a big bin of water with a scooper next to the toilet, and when you were done you had to scoop a bunch of water into the toilet to force your business down. And almost all the bathrooms have butt guns (yes, I am SURE this is the technical term). They're like the poor man's version of a bidet. Mounted on the wall next to the toilets, there is a hose with a sprayer on the end that looks just like the sprayer and hose combo you would find at an American kitchen sink.

Siem Reap (day 3)

Our last day in Siem Reap, my Songyuan friend and I went to check out Preah Prohn Rath Monastery, which was very near to our hostel and the main area of town. The place looked really, really new; everything was brightly colored and there was just so much stuff. In actuality, it is the oldest monastery in Siem Reap (this is where China and Cambodia are sometimes alike with their temples, monestaries, pagodas, etc. restoration). As wrong as it is to say, it almost looked like the Buddhist cemetery version of Disneyland.

This is actually not a garbage pile, it's a building pile.

All of these little tower/statue things have deceased monks' ashes in them.

The one old looking building was blocked off.

After that, we decided to try to check out a small village that is supposedly floating. Lonely Planet said it was about a 30 minute tuk tuk ride to catch a boat that would cost us 13USD and then take us there. We got ourselves a tuk tuk and set off. The tuk tuk headed out of the city and into some of the most gorgeous country scenery I have seen in a really long time. That ride was me falling in love with Cambodia.

When I first arrived, my friend had said that Cambodia was really colorful and the sky was really big. I kind of brushed that off, like, "Ok, what does that even mean..." Once we got out of the city though, I completely understood. The colors ARE amazing, especially in contrast with the dull, dirty, grey everything of Songyuan. The sky looks so vast and is actually blue and visible, no pollution, and no high rises or mountains to infringe on it.

Our tuk tuk ended up driving us maybe an hour out into the country. About 45 minutes into the the ride, my friend looked at me and asked if I thought we were safe. Our driver HAD seemed a bit off, he had these weird random giggles and invited us to his home, which was near where we were trying to go, but the idea of our safety being at risk was something that hadn't even occurred to me. She did have a point though, two American female tourists in the middle of nowhere Cambodia with a strange tuk tuk driver, no one that knows where they went, no way to contact anyone for help and no way to communicate with locals. Eek.

Luckily, shortly after, we arrived at the place to buy the boat tickets... where they proceeded to try to charge us almost double what Lonely Planet had said, for only three hours. We knew that was going to be a total ripoff all things considered, and we were really happy with just the drive itself, so we decided not to go after all. We turned around and then the tuk tuk driver did end up taking us to his home (we had actually driven directly past it on the way there), but it wasn't creepy, just kind of awkward. There were about four or five kids running around, two women and one or two other men (no one that spoke any English) and then a ton of animals.

The animals are common thing in Cambodia. Whereas China has pretty much no wildlife and few kept/domestic animals, in Cambodia, we saw an abundance of cats, dogs, pigs, cows, water buffalo, chickens, ducks and geese both chained or penned up and wandering around freely. The whole country was like a free range farm, my friend and I loved it.

Duck farm!

That night, we met my friend from the States again and did something I have been wanting to do foreeeeeever... Thai fish pedicures! The little fish eat all the dead skin off your feet, or legs, or hands, or whatever. It's awesome. It feels super weird at first; you can feel little scrapes that kind of tickle, but once you get used to it, it's great. And you get a free beer!

Then we had some interesting food for dinner and drinks at a great loungey bar. The three of us laid on a bed-like platform, complete with pillows and such, hanging from the ceiling, like a swing. The rest of the seats were hammocks and the like. Absolutely perfect for holiday.

Raw meats that we barbequed for dinner include (from the left) squid, crocodile, beef, snake and chicken (in the middle).

Siem Reap (day 2 con't)

After Angkor Wat, we headed to Ta Prohm. While Angkor Wat was the big, main temple, Ta Prohm was completely different. It was a lot less crowded and in a much worse state of disrepair, but the most important thing was the trees. They had taken over the temple and it was absolutely amazing to see.

Next we had lunch, saw some monkeys digging through trash bins, saw a woman throwing coconuts at them and saw them fleeing. It was kind of awesome.

Then we went to Bayon, which is different from the first two temples. It is covered in faces; 216 to be exact. It's up for debate whether they are all the face of a single king, or the faces of many deities. Like Ta Prohm, Bayon was also much less crowded than Angkor Wat and still vastly different.

We finished Bayon just as the temples were closing for the day. Throughout the day we had passed many other cool temples and things, but those three were the ones where we spent our time and did serious exploring.

That evening, we met up with a friend of mine from the States, that I was planning to travel with after my Songyuan friend left, for dinner, drinks and a hookah bar. My States' friend had actually found our hostel and left me a note with the front desk to let us know when he'd meet us which was pretty exciting; that was I think the fourth piece of "mail" I've received in Asia, haha!