Today we slept in for a little bit, at least compared to our early starts the last couple of days!
After a bit of a walk around the area we are staying in we grabbed a tuk tuk and asked to go to the bamboo railway and the killing caves.
We started out at the railway which was amazing! It is a single track with these wooden structures on wheels with a motor. Me and Shane got on one and headed off towards the stop. We hadn't got too far when we met someone coming the other way, so with a bit of a push we went back to where we started! We got a bit further the next time before meeting someone coming the other way. Shane helped the driver to remove the whole train structure from the rail so the others could pass! The others we met after took theirs off instead and we eventually with a lot more speed than I thought possible from these things made it to the stop. Here we grabbed a drink and resisted buying anything from the locals there!
We then started the repeat trip back to the start and when we arrived went back to meet our tuk tuk driver. This was one of my favourite things so far, it was such a cool experience!
We then had quite a bit of a drive to the killing caves. As we were getting close me and Shane noticed a Buddhist temple on the top of a mountain and talked about how much effort it would be to get to it. About ten minutes later we realised that the mountain was where the killing caves are and we would be walking to get to them!
We started the walk up a steep hill in the midday heat and were both sweating within minutes! We eventually made it to the caves first, which had the same effect as our visit to the killing fields. Here the victims were thrown from the top of the caves and left to die at the bottom. It was a really haunting place.
We carried on our walk up the mountain eventually reaching the very top where we had seen the Buddhist temple. The view across the landscape was well worth the walk! We sat and took it in with a nice cold bottle of water before taking a walk around the temples to see all the monkeys that were up there.
We finally found our way to the steps that would take us back down the mountain on a different route and made our way carefully down.
At the bottom we met our driver and he took us to a restaurant where we grabbed some food and talked to him about his experience during the Khmer rule and Cambodian politics! He was really interesting to talk to and it was nice to talk to a local about their own experiences.
We then made our way back into town where we went for a bit of a further walk around before heading back for a much needed shower!
We are going to grab some food in a bit and make a plan for what else we want to see in Battambang before leaving.