Hello from Battambang!!

Our journey from Siem Reap to Battambang was only a few hours, which was good. On arriving at the bus station it was madness, tuk-tuk drivers everywhere screaming for you to go with them. Worst place in Cambodia for the crazy tuk-tuk drivers so far!! We ended up with this guy who took us to a nice cheap hotel.

The weather wasn’t looking to great so we decided to save the sightseeing for the following day and just chilled out and took a walk around the city. Battambang is quite nice, not very busy for the 3rd biggest city though. That night we went out for some food and B started to feel unwell so we went back to the hotel for an early night.

When we woke the following morning B was quite ill and felt sick with no energy so we decided to not go sightseeing and just have a day in bed so not much to report. The next day B was still not right but she managed to get up and we went to see the bamboo train. This is the tourist attraction here which is basically a train track with a platform made of bamboo. You sit on it and somebody takes you along the track and you see the local villages. They were asking for $5 each for a little ride on the bamboo train and with us being the grippy travellers we are decided it was a bit expensive and we were happy enough with just seeing the bamboo train.

We then decided to see the nearby temple which is situated at the top of a mountain, it had amazing views of the countryside and Battambang. We also saw two caves which were used by the Khmer Rouge when they were in power for killing men, women and children who they made out were against the regime. They would make them stand at the top and either push them to fall to the bottom or hit them on the head. There was one cave for the adults and one for the children. Stairs have been built so you can walk down to the bottom, where once the bodies would have all lied. There was a small stupa in place that housed around 70 skulls of the victims as a shrine. It wasn’t nice at all, very eery and disturbing.

With B having very little energy left and still not feeling right we went back to the hotel so she could get better for heading off to the orphanage the following day. That night we decided to venture out for some fresh air and some food. We ate at a really nice local restaurant that had amazing fruit shakes.

Battambang is a nice city, glad we made the stop. B is now feeling much better and we are off to spend 10 – 14 days at an orphanage outside of Phnom Penh......so lets see what stories we have from there. Until then......

J+B