Battambang (BB), Cambodia 10/5

Battambang, or BB from now in the blog, is the capital city of the province of the same name located in NW Cambodia; it was founded in the 11th century and is "well known" for being Cambodia's leading rice producing province as well the country's best preserved French Colonial architecture since the French colonized the country from 1863 until 1954.

BB is Cambodia's 2nd largest city.
It has an average of 8.8" of rain in October, i.e. when we were there last month, compared to only .2" in January.
In BB we stayed a ways out of town at BB My Homestay as I mentioned in the last blog post; Mr Kun, the owner, always has a number of tuk tuk drivers he has made arrangements with to be on call for his guests. I was initially uncomfortable with this as I knew from reading many, many posts on the BB forum of Trip Advisor which tuk tuk drivers in BB were highly recommended; I wondered if any BB My Homestay's tuk tuk driver's price would be a lot higher and the guide possibly not as good in terms of taking us all over BB province and being able to explain to us clearly in English what we were seeing.
We decided it was not worth it to ruffle Mr. Kun's feathers by making arrangements to have a driver not associated with his guesthouse to take us hither, thither and yon and ended up with "Happy" our tuk tuk driver for the next 5 days, who was fantastic.
There had been, before we got there, a huge amount of rain in the BB area which caused the worst flooding there in over 20 years and we also experienced a lot of rain during our days with Happy; he constantly had to ask the locals if the roads ahead were flooded.
It was clearly evident that BB is an incredibly poor province, based on the road conditions, people's homes, the huge number of children playing outside morning, noon and afternoon and therefore not attending school, the infrastructure, etc. It was certainly my first experience with such overwhelming poverty.
Instead of my usual blog post, I'm going to end the text here and just post photos with captions where appropriate.

Our tuk tuk with Happy, the driver/guide.

The market area of BB. Motorcycles were about 20 to 1 over cars in BB area.

The oxcarts, formerly exclusively used by villagers, used to park where the Smart sign is; that is directly opposite the market in the above photo. Villagers used to transport their goods by boats only from the river to the "market" i.e. under a tree.

The French built this bridge in 1916; the building at the end is a provincial government hall. The bridges in BB aren't high enough for most boats to travel under.

Some photos of how badly flooded the area was when we were there! That's Happy in the mirror. Schools were closed down b/c they were inaccessible due to the flooding.

3rd statue of Mr Ngou built in 1994 as the other 2 fell down; food and other donations are left there while the incense sticks burn down; if however the people leave before their incense sticks burn all the way down, the police take their offerings to the market to sell them so the money can then be used for the statue's cleaning or the money is given to the poor, OR likelier the money is kept by the police, Happy said!

Views from our tuk tuk: water buffalo.

Imagine trying to gain access to your home after the torrential rains!

Steven in the tuk tuk wearing the poncho from our tour to Doi Inthanon Park outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Kids playing Tarzan!

On the locally famous Bamboo Train; formerly used to transport passengers, now mostly used to transport rice and bamboo wood; 90% of tourists to the BB area get on it; in low season when we were there. there are about 15-20 trains a day compared to high season of 40-50 trips a day.

8 kms train ride to closest village; train, run by a small awn mower type engine, went about 20 mph which seemed pretty darn fast; it was a very loud and somewhat rickety ride with nothing to hold onto!

Views from the "train"

At the end of the ride, this 11 year old girl, Jao, was waiting and presented us with this adorable coconut leaf grasshopper she had made and gave to us; notice the array of bracelets she also had made and was selling - each one took her about 30 minutes to make.

She has been giving tours for the past 2 years of the now defunct brick factory; she spoke excellent English which, she said, she had learned from tourists; she mentioned that she could neither read or write English.

Steven and I bought a number of Jao's bracelets and we both wore one each right away for the rest of the trip; Steven is still wearing his! I've put a couple aside for our next trip.

The track is one only lane so, when 2 trains meet up, the drivers play rock, paper, scissors or flip a coin to determine which one can stay on the track; the loosing driver has to take his train off the track with the help of the winning driver as seen in the pictures below; the whole process takes only about 10 minutes or so - glad we weren't there in the busy season!

Encountered a second train so had to do it all over again!

Our bamboo train driver.

Very hard for Steven to turn around on the train when it was traveling fairly quickly so I could take his picture,

After the train ride, we drove to a nearby town to tour this "Ancient House" built in 1920 of teak and other woods;

View of the home

This lady gave us a tour, in French, of her beautiful home; thank goodness I had not forgotten my French! During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, her parents, brother and 4 children were all killed. The house is still standing b/c it was used to feed 200 soldiers at a time when the Khmer Rouge were in power.

Before the Cambodian had toothbrushes, these items were all used to keep teeth cleaned; every new bride was given a set on her wedding day.

Rice field

Built in 2001, this is one of only 3 suspension bridges over the Stung Sangkey River; before the bridges were built, boats would cross from one side to the other; the one way cost was 200 riel or 5 cents to us.

Our guide/driver, Happy on the bridge.

Can't begin to tell you how happy the children were we passed by in our tuk tuk, day after day after day; to a one, they all, without any prompting by either peers or parents, waved and shouted out Hello, Hello with huge smiles on their faces.

Next drove to the Banan Grape Farm/winery.

This is Cambodia's only winery; they produce about 10,000 bottles a year; the plantation opened in 1999 and the winery in 2004; grapes are harvested 2-3 times a year; the brandy sells for $12 each and the red wine sells for $15 per bottle; poor Cambodians cannot afford these prices; they drink either palm or rice wine or beer, Happy said.

Kids playing in the swollen river waters.

Flying foxes or fruit bats in trees near the grape farm/winery; the bat wings are the size of an eagle's! Many Cambodians, including Happy, prefer bat meat to red meat b/c it's so tender; they normally kill them with slingshots but NOT these ones b/c they're considered sacred b/c they're very close to the temple seen in the photos below.

We finally stop for lunch at 2:30; Happy explained that Khmer breakfasts are normally either rice, porridge or noodles and they eat the same meal for both lunch and dinner; he also said that kids start school at age 6 and up and attend for a half day; Cambodian teachers and police are only paid between $80 and $120 a month; many of the teachers end up being guides as well to supplement their teacher salaries but this results in their not having sufficient time to prepare lesson plans, etc; the end result is a very low quality of education.

Boy making sugar cane juice.

At Wat (i.e Temple) Banan.

I truly think we should have nicknamed our trip the Trip of Steps as we have never climbed so many steps in our lives! Built in the 11th century, the wat can only be seen after climbing 358 steps!