HAVING A BANG-UP TIME IN BATTAMBANG

The bamboo train was an awesome way to start the day, and our day continued to be fantastic.  We drove up into the hills where we visited an old wooden (and therefore very rare) Buddhist temple, bought sticky rice and red beans which had been steamed with coconut milk and sugar inside a hollowed out piece of bamboo, and went to the village where they make fish paste (Phewwww! Stinky!)  It seems that every village has its specialty, as we visited the rice noodle village and watched the process of making noodles, the rice paper village (rice paper as in what you wrap spring rolls in), and the basket village.

Dried squid at the market

Anyone for fried spiders on a stick?  They're garlic flavored!

Mr. Tin and Jeff enjoyed munching on the fried spiders.... I passed

 

The brick making village

Walking into the kiln (As a boy, Mr. Tin used to work at a brick factory, BTW)

The kiln of the brick factory

Sweet sticky rice cooked in bamboo containers at a roadside stand

Mr. Tin explains the process

"Delish!" 

"Yum!" (much better than fried spiders)

Fish drying in the sun at the "fish paste" village

Pew!

Mr. Tin told us his wife makes her own fish paste in much more hygienic conditions.

The boat making village

Making rice paper for spring rolls, etc.  I always wondered why rice paper had the basketweave pattern!

Preparing for basket-weaving

We also visited Wat Ek Phnom, a large stupa which is in pretty bad shape.  Mr. Tin told us that many of the huge sandstone blocks from the temple were removed by the Khmer Rouge to build a dam, adding to its state of disrepair. 

LOVE THIS PHOTO!!!

AND THIS ONE!  I am so lucky to have been to the places I've been and to have seen what I've seen

At the rice noodle village

Add caption

Relaxing at our restaurant where we were served in our private pavilion overlooking the river

It was a wonderful meal

Our private pavilion restaurant - sooo cool!

After Wat Ek Phnom, we had a real treat.  Mr. Tin took us to a restaurant in the hills that the Cambodian people frequent.  It’s built along the Sankor river and has bamboo huts on high stilts that are used as dining rooms.  Each group gets its own hut and is seated on the bamboo slatted floor (as Jeff and I are much bigger than the average Cambodian I was really nervous that the floor wouldn’t hold us, but it did… bamboo is stronger than it looks!).  As we sat on mats on the floor our hosts set up hammocks for us to rest on and brought us drinks, papaya salad, rice and a deep fried fish for us to lunch upon.  Though it had to be 95 degrees out, it was lovely and cool in our dining hut as the wind blew up from the river and through the bamboo slats.  We lounged in the hammocks while we waited for our food and then had a little siesta after our meal.  No tourists at this restaurant, but since it was Sunday there were plenty of Cambodian groups eating and doing plenty of drinking (oh, the rice wine again!).  Mr. Tin and our driver disappeared while we were eating but later told us they had eel and duck for their repast.

After lunch we checked out a suspension bridge over the Sankor river built by the Swiss.  It was supposed to be a pedestrian bridge but there was pretty brisk motorcycle and bike traffic using it while we were on it.  We passed through a charming village that had a lot of the traditional Khmer wood houses persevered and had a lovely interlude with an elderly woman who graciously allowed us to enter her beautiful teakwood home.  She spoke French, as most of the older generation in Cambodia do, and my French, along with Mr. Tin’s comments was just adequate enough to understand as she showed us her home. She demonstrated to us how the Khmer people used the betel nut ‘back in the day’.  She had a little carved wooden kit with utensils and showed how the nuts were extracted from the shell and then crushed to be chewed. She showed us her intricately carved teak bed and other antique furniture in her home (this is a stilt home so we’d had to climb a wide staircase to enter).  Our hostess went on to demonstrate some of the musical instruments she had on display, explaining that she had been a music teacher in her youth. She also had photographs of her family, including a cousin, Sak Sutsakhan, who had been a high ranking official during the war. We said “au revoir” to our hostess, leaving a small donation to help her with the upkeep of her home.

Suspension bridge over the river

Inside the "ancient house" - a very charming interlude

Our hostess demonstrates the beetle nut process of teeth cleaning

Mr. Tin demonstrating rice threshing (at least I think that's what he's doing)

On the road again, we headed to Phnom Sampeu.  It is on the top of a steep hill and we had the option of walking an hour and a half up the hill or taking motorcycles.  Well, despite my better judgment we took the motorcycles.  The poor kid who took me up the hill probably had bruises on his shoulders from me hanging on to him.  I laughed as I looked at Jeff on the moto ahead of me…. Of course too cool to hang on, he was in danger of falling off backwards!  Words cannot express how steep this mountain was! At the top there was a complex of temples, stupas, pagodas, and a monastery.  There was also a breathtaking view of the Cambodian countryside.  Intensely green rice fields dotted with smudges of smoke from home fires and kilns, mountains in the distance in all directions, including toward the Thai border… it was majestic. 

Bahahahahaaaaha!

Breathtaking vista

I quite like this photo....

Unfortunately, it was this sweeping view which made it attractive to warriors during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and amidst the Buddhist symbols of peace were Soviet artillery and machine gun turrets.  Even more disturbing was the “Killing Cave” – a cavern in the mountain which had for centuries been a Buddhist shrine with a statue of a reclining Buddha in it which was the site of a massacre during the Pol Pot regime.  Mr. Tin explained to us that they’d found instruments of torture at the cavern entrance at top and the bodies of slain dissidents thrown down into the cave.  Horrifyingly, the skulls of the victims were still in containers in the cave, next to the reclining Buddha.  Mr. Tin gave us his own mind-numbing account of growing up during the Khmer Rouge regime which I will explain in another entry, but suffice it to say that we were in a state of shock as we left this place of such tranquility and such horror. 

This school was used as a hospital during the reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge - and was the scene of a horrifying personal narrative told by Mr. Tin.

"The Killing Cave" - where bodies of Pol Pot's slain enemies were discarded

Shrine inside the "Killing Cave"

Skeletons of Pot's victims

At the bottom of the mountain (we walked down – no more motorcycles for me!) we gathered at another cave opening to wait for the bats.  This cave is the home of a zillion big bats which leave the cave every night at the same time (according to the season).  One Khmer man at a rest stop near the cave said, “I talked to the head bat and he told me they will leave tonight at 6:32!”  Well, at 6:32 we and a crowd of about 20 other foreigners saw one lone bat leave the cave.   Then a couple more.  Soon, an exodus of bats came pouring out of the cave in a steady stream that seemed never-ending.  Mr. Tin said it takes two hours for all of the bats to exit the cave.  We watched for about 10 minutes and had to have seen 10,000 bats in that window of time.  Almost as creepy as seeing the bats flow out of the cave in such numbers, as we drove away from the area we saw a black stripe across the sky stretching for miles.  As Mr. Tin said, it looked like a dragon snaking across the horizon as the bats flew to wherever their instinct was compelling them to fly.  Apparently they soar through the air until about 4 a.m. when they return to their cave, many dying as they miss the cavern’s entrance and slam into the mountain face. 

At precisely 6:32 the bats began to pour out of the cave.  Video below actually creeps me out.

Back in Battambang we had a scrumptious dinner at La Pomme D’Amour and turned in early since we had to catch the boat to Siem Reap at 6:45 a.m.