Battambang, bricks, a bat cave and beyond

22nd December 2017

Royal Hotel, Battambang

A very pleasant 28c

The weather took a very chilly turn about a week ago, a bit of a shock to the system specially as we'd just got into the swing of setting off early, 0615/0630, in order to miss the heat of the day.  Suddenly we were plunged into coolness.  When I say cool, I mean 16-18c, so not VERY cool.  We have decided we quite like the early starts so we are continuing with them, cool or not.  It's made cycling and sleeping easier, that's for sure, but I don't have a fleece any more so I'm having to use my sarong as a 'wrap' in the evenings.  Don't worry though, it's heading back into the 30s this weekend.

Long shadows, early morning, heading north

We have spent a few dusty, days on the road in rural Cambodia since Phnom Penh, all in all easy riding.  Dead pan flat with the occasional lumpety bumpety, washboard surface, but nothing too awful.  I've been a bit remiss with the whole Wat thing, we don't visit them very often (Angkor Wat is obviously the exception but even then BW will get Wat'ed out very quickly I'm sure) but some of the temples we have passed have been quite interesting in the sense that many of them are very 'rustic' and often a bit dilapidated.  So I've taken a few photos lately:

Colourful ladies welcoming you to the temple

The houses, usually built on stilts, seem to have gotten higher and with more expansive roofs as we've moved towards Battambang.  Many of them have quite fancy staircases (metal as opposed to wood) and often there is the poor relation (the old house) falling down to the side of the new one.  A sign of prosperity perhaps? 

Huge, blue tiled roof extending around the house

Taming the serpent

A puncture on BW's bike drew a bit of a crowd on one of the days, luckily it wasn't too hot.  No pressure, just keep on looking for that elusive piece of wire ........

How many is that now Dave?

Trucks and vans are generally overloaded with all manner of things, including people.  At the moment it's wedding season so the transportation of wedding paraphernalia is common, not only are the chairs stacked well above the legal limit (if there is one) there are also people sitting ON TOP of the chairs, which from where I sit on my bicycle I can see them rocking and rolling with the camber of the road.  Sometimes, if there's room, they will string a hammock between items and have a little nap!  To circumvent the rocking and rolling problem, some trucks have huge wheels at the back of their vehicles, a bit like those jacked-up cars we sometimes see, except here this is an excuse to load even MORE 'stuff' on top and on the back of the vehicle.

The driver is having a nap in his hammock at the front.

Industries along this stretch of road, running south of the Tonle Sap, include pottery, brick-making, rice, pineapples and fishing.  The old kilns have been replaced by huge, modern buildings, presumably because they can fire more bricks at a time. 

Old kiln

In one of the villages we came across a house (Chinese) with a huge bat decorating its doorway.  When I went closer to photograph it I could see fairy lights strapped to the body and wings, and a huge light bulb in its mouth.  How amazingly scary would that look lit up at night, particularly as there's often no street lighting!

The bat cave!

Children feature quite highly in any cycle ride through Cambodia.  The constant 'hello' and 'bye bye' never fails to make me smile (except when my shoulder and neck have frozen and to turn my head and wave causes me so much pain all I can do is grimace); yesterday I even had an 'I love you'!  Today, while trying to find the old tram sheds at Battambang railway station (I thought it would be a good photo opportunity) led us into what I can only describe as a shanty town.  People living in semi-permanent structures that had been 'patched' with cardboard, corrugated iron, plastic sheeting, pretty much anything they could get their hands on I guess.  While walking away from the area we spotted 3 children, aged 3 or 4, playing in the dirt.  They began by shouting the usual 'hello' but then one of them ran towards Dave and another towards me, arms stretched and smiling, and hugged us (our legs, they were so small) like we were long lost friends.  We were both quite taken aback.  They hung on for a minute while the cynic in me waited for the hand out gesture, meaning give me money, but it didn't come.  They had a hug then went back to their game.  That was a lovely moment.

One of 4 brothers who greeted us on the road

Next stop Siem Reap.

Happy Christmas everyone, see you on the other side!

Laters

All the Ps in Phnom Penh

15th December 2017
Sassi Guesthouse, Phnom Penh
Hot, hot, hot

This post was going to be entitled Pol Pot, Pavement Parking and Prostitutes in Phnom Penh, but I decided it was too flippant to lump the Pol Pot regime in with the rest of the Ps.  More on that later.

My last post ended with us arriving in Kampot.  What a lovely, chilled place that was.  We did very little, along with the rest of the population, except wander aimlessly, eat, drink, sleep, repeat.  Then we moved onto Kep, all of 24kms away, but with a completely different vibe.  Firstly, there was a beach and secondly the town is very spread out with no real 'centre' as such.

The first thing we did was meet up with Katy and Ed, friends of friends, who happen to be in Cambodia at the same time as us, also travelling on bicycles.  We chewed the cud over breakfast, all things bicycle touring, and then reunited in the evening for dinner and a few beers.  It just so happens we're more or less cycling the same route in Cambodia so while we all ended up in Phnom Penh together the next time we will get together is probably going to be Siem Reap over Christmas.  It's a small world!

We stayed at the very lovely Bacoma Gueshouse in one of the round bungalows.  The grounds of the guesthouse are jungle that's been tamed and act to keep everywhere feeling very cool.  In fact, we rarely used the fan in the bungalow and there was a point one evening when I almost reached for a 2nd layer, but resisted the temptation.  We rode around the National Park early in the morning and while we heard a lot of wildlife, we saw very little.  Even so, it was a lovely thing to do.  On our way back to the guesthouse we took a detour along the new road, that's so wide it really should be called a boulevard, where we found some of the old burned out Modernist buildings.

Mr Millipede

Signposting in Kep National Park

Kep National Park

Graffiti on a burned out building

Boats waiting to take passengers to Rabbit Island

Kep was once a playground for the French elite before the Khmer Rouge came to power, and although it's small and sleepy now it definitely has visions of grandeur.  The huge roundabout at the entrance to the town, plus the new 'boulevards' being built, all point to a bigger future.

Two long, dusty traffic-filled days later, we arrived in Phnom Penh.  If you arrived in Phnom Penh on a bicycle not having ridden into another Asian City before, you might have had at least one heart attack.  It's crazy but it works, somehow.  An expat in Kep, when asked about the number of Lexus cars in Cambodia, said (he was Irish) "ah, now in Cambodia you're either a Big Man, or you're nothing and Big Guys drive a Lexus".  It turns out they also drive anything that's huge and shiny, has air conditioning and ensures you sit higher than the rest of the traffic.  Today I even saw a Rolls Royce.  Pavement parking ensures that pedestrians have to walk in the road with the rest of the moving traffic, I have no idea what anyone in a wheelchair or with a pushchair would do.

On the way to Phnom Penh

And so to the Killing Fields (Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre) and The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly a school that became the notorious S-21 Detention Centre.  I'm not sure I can add anything to what has already been said about what the Cambodian people went through during the Pol Pot years, I can only talk about how harrowing I found the experience.  Astonishing, is that The Khmer Rouge killed almost a quarter of the Cambodian population (nobody really knows how many) in the relatively short time (between April 1975 and January 1979) they were in power.  It happened in my lifetime but I'm ashamed to say I remember very little about it. 

What I saw and heard while visiting these two sites was indeed awful.  Very little is left to the imagination, and perhaps that's how it should be.  Personal testimonies of survivors, photographs, paintings and original torture implements, all paint a very dark picture.  There's no smiling or laughing in these places, it's very sombre.  It's not an easy place to be an observer, but observe and learn we must.  I urge you to do your own research on this subject.

We both came away with a new found respect for the lovely Cambodian people we have met on our travels.  It's staggering to think that survivors over the age of 40 will have some experience of this.  Equally stupefying is that all the older people we see in the villages we cycle through somehow managed to survive the terrible conditions, starvation and the murder of family members, yet they move on, with dignity. 

The Pagoda at The Killing Fields, to commemorate those who died

Another P - prostitutes.  There are some notorious bars and clubs in Phnom Penh and today, unknowingly, we had lunch at one of them.  BW fancied a felafal and it was only after we'd sat down and ordered we noticed the rest of the clientele.  The food was lovely, and it was an interesting lunch, not least because I managed to indulge one of my favourite pastimes of 'earwigging' but my lips are sealed - for the time being anyway!

Pavement parking, no room for pedestrians!

Laters