We got a bus to Battambang, a little tricky due to the public holiday but managed to get the right bus! Did not enjoy the ride much at all, Cambodian music and film clips BLASTING on the stereo and aircon was freezing! Ended up wearing earplugs for the 5 hour trip, it was that bad! Arrived there safely tho and got a Tuk Tuk to our hotel, called the royal hotel, was nice and clean but very old and daggy! We ended up having lunch at a great place called geko cafe (another one that supports disadvantaged ppl) then decided to visit Ek Phnom (old temple ruin). What a fun experience that ended up being! As we drove along in the Tuk Tuk we got hit with a couple of water bombs... Then more and more! Traditionally at the new year locals throw water and powder at each other to celebrate- we got caught in it! So we bought some water bottles and poked holes in the lids to get them right back, was so much fun! We were quite wet by the time we got to the temple! It was quite chaotic there, a popular place for people to gather and celebrate so there were lots of food stalls and people spraying each other with water and lots of picnics. The temple itself was nice, mostly just ruins, I really didn't understand how the temple could be so badly damaged from nature, it looked so twisted and buckled- but after seeing the temples in siem reap with trees growing from them I finally understand! Anyway we walked around the beautiful stone temple ruins and tried not to get wet! We then had a breed with our Tuk Tuk driver and set off back to the hotel. Well we thought we got wet last time... That was nothing!!!!! The roads were covered in people throwing water, water bombs were made from small plastic bags with elastic bands around them and ranged from warm dirty river water to freezing cold ice water! We bought some water bombs and joined them! What a ride.. Out Tuk Tuk driver loved it and pretty sure he kept stopping on Purpose to let people jump up and pour buckets of water on us and cover us in powder! It was so funny some of them didn't get us as we were tourists but then as we went past we water bombed them, the look on their face was priceless! We did not have a dry spot anywhere by the end of it! Luckily there was a shelf above the Tuk Tuk drivers head we could hide our camera so it stayed dry! Great fun!
That night we went to the Phareps circus where disadvantaged children are trained in circus skills and get to live there and get food and school paid for. It was fantastic! The kids were so talented and the flips, jumps and balancing acts were amazing! Apparently some have gone to Canada and have been selected for cirque de solei such a nice outcome for them!
The next day we hired the same taxi driver for the day ($15 I think?) we went to the bamboo train first, which is a railway they made for transporting things between farms and towns. It was a pretty amazing set up! The cart was just a square of bamboo and under it was the axle. There was only one track so when u come across someone going in the other direction they just stopped the bamboo cart, took the motor off, picked up the cart, took it off the tracks, lifted up the axles and put them to the side and let the other pass then put it back on the tracks again! Was so funny but seemed to work well! We had to get off a couple of times to do this to let another cart of tourists pass. They don't really use the railway much now in many places, just for tourists.
After that we went to a temple, Wat Banan and it was very impressive. it had massive steps leading to it (about 200) with a stone snake on both sides of the path that ran the whole way, was very cool. Down the bottom there was a cave around the side. Took us quite a while to find but was a pretty good cave, not many tourists and all left in its natural form so was good. On the way back chris stubbed his toe and it bled everywhere. We had some lunch there (fried rice) and chatted to the Tuk Tuk driver (and fixed chris' toe). The Tuk Tuk driver told us all about his family during the Khmer Rouge reigime. He was really lucky and all of his siblings and parents survived, however his family was all split up at different places for years. He had to live with the Buddhist monks for a while. He told us an awful story of his cousins, two little girls (8 and 5 I think) were taken. To watch their parents killed at the killing cave (will explain in a minute) and the two little girls were raped by the soldiers and left alive somehow (didn't usually happen). The two girls then had to hide in the jungle for a couple days and managed to get to their aunties house (Tuk Tuk drivers' mums house). They then adopted them as their own so now he calls them his sisters. They are now married to lovely husbands and both have children. What a heart breaking story though and these people were the lucky ones!
We then stopped at a winery, the only one in Cambodia apparently. They only make red wine, it was pretty average but might have been ok with fruit and ice as a sangria!
We then went to another temple which also had the killing caves next to the site. The killing caves are another awful story, there the Khmer Rouge pushed people off a ledge into caves down below to kill them. Thousands of people were killed there and there are still bones there in a memorial to see. It used to be a place for music and ceremonies but not since the killings. We then saw phnom sampeou which had spectacular views, but lots of steps to climb up! This phnom was a lot more modern and had lots of paintings and gold roofs. We then drove back in the sunset, and got ready to head to siem reap the next day