Battanbang, Cambodia
Battambang
Battambang is the city that made me really fall in love with Cambodia. We were staying in a guest house about a 20 minute walk outside of the city. When our bus came to the city we felt fab as a tuk tuk driver was waiting for us, holding a sign with our names on it. (Still traveling with Laura) Our bus took a tad bit longer than expected so we didn't really have much time to do anything this first day. We ventured into town for dinner and settled on a pizza restaurant that was popping. Filled with Cambodians, we were the only Westerners/white people in the whole restaurant which was cool. We realized that apart from inside our guest house, there weren't any Westerners anywhere. I'm not sure if Battambang is always like this or if being in the middle of a giant Cambodian holiday had anything to do with it. Regardless, we really liked being the only tourists.
We met three people back at the guest house and made plans to all hire a tuk tuk for the day tomorrow to go around and see all the sites.
Day 2
Since I suck, I only remember one person's name. So Joey (China), a girl from China, a guy from Ireland, Laura and I hire a tuk tuk for the whole day for only $3/person. Our first stop is the bamboo train. The bamboo train is basically this little wooden platform placed on top of wheels with a lawnmower motor. Super sketchy looking and one of the town's main attractions! We had to wait a few minutes for a "train" to get back and in the meantime some cute Cambodian kids asked if I wanted to play ball. So Laura and I played volleyball with a group of Cambodian kids until our train arrived.
The whole bamboo train experience was really fun and took about an hour. We flew down the tracks on our rickety platform passing locals, cows, and rice fields. We took the train to the next town over and waited for about 15 minutes while different trains (feels weird calling them trains) were being taken off and switching directions. This town was basically just little shacks set up selling food & souvenirs. I met a cat. The cat loved me. And then we set off back to where we started!
Then we took a scenic drive where we stopped for lunch before heading to the killing caves and bat cave. The drive was so pretty. I think I could happily sit in a tuk tuk all day long and drive around SE Asia just looking at the landscape. The more we drove around, the more Cambodia reminded me of Kenya. The killing caves weren't that cool and nothing was in English so we didn't really learn anything about the Khmer Rouge killings. But the bat caves were really cool. Everyone was lined up on the street and at about 6:20 all of these bats started flying out of the cave. SO many bats. Apparently it's like 3 million bats. It takes about 40 minutes for all of the bats to fly out. After that we all went back to the hostel and ate. Laura and I are getting picked up at 11pm for a night bus to Kampot.