The Bamboo Train

After a good night’s sleep at our nice hotel, the Khemera Battambag I hotel Mr. Tin picked us up nice and early to take us to the bamboo train.  What a crazy experience!  The French built a railroad in the 1930s which was abandoned when they withdrew from Cambodia and during the subsequent civil war.  The rails – now all warped and in disrepair – were soon used by locals who rigged up bamboo carts which ride on wheels from old tanks, trains, or anything else they could scavenge.  They power their homemade carts with motorcycle engines and – voila! – you have the bamboo train. 

 

Love on the bamboo train

Mr. Tin and our bamboo train conductor

These tracks are largely abandoned by regular train traffic - leaving it open to the bamboo express

These folks were coming from the other direction... had to stop, dismantle their "train" and wait for us to pass before they could continue down the track

Mr. Tin cracks me up

As you can see, the bamboo trains are not the most well-constructed mode of transport.  Scary, but so much fun!!

Originally used to transport rice to market, Mr. Tin said that he was the one who originally thought of having tourists ride the rails as a novel and unique experience.  He used to give motorcycle tours and once he took one of his clients to look at the bamboo train and they decided to load the motorcycle onto the bamboo platform and return to Battanbang that way and it caught on.  I was a little sketched out to try this, especially since the rails were in such bad shape (it seemed it would be oh so easy to jump the track and end up in the ditch) and the bamboo platforms were in varying states of disrepair as well,  But I’m game, and I climbed aboard with Jeff  as Mr. Tin stood in the back with the “engineer” and off we went.  We clickety-clacked down the track at an alarming pace as the jungle, some small villages, and a few water buffalo blurred by.  Particularly scary was a very shaky looking bridge which Mr. Tin later told us used to be concrete until it was blown up by the Khmer Rouge and was replaced with wooden (and apparently now rotting) trestle. 

The most interesting part of the ride, however, was when we met up with a bamboo train coming from the other direction.  Whoever has the most people aboard “wins” and those on the other cart have to quickly disembark and taken their train apart so the winners can pass.  Hilarious!  After about a half an hour riding our precarious transport we stopped at a village where Mr. Tin showed us a brick factory (when I say factory I’m using the term very loosely) and how the bricks are formed, dried, and then fired in the kiln.  At this stop we met a brother and sister who were traveling and struck up a conversation with them.  Turns out they’re from Lake Placid, New York and know Jeff’s employee Tom Birnie and his family.  Go figure!  We gave them Stetson bandanas since Tom helped design them. 

The Fish siblings - finding friends of friends in a remote section of Cambodia!