Another early start of 6am saw us take a mini bus to the 'port' for a boat trip, what this actually meant was a 20 min drive out of town to a flooded village to then change to a cart and a tractor, one for us and the other for our bags, amazing! After a 10 min bumpy but hillarious journey we found said port - a hill with a boat floating on water! This was our boat which would take us through some incredible floating villages and finally end at Battambang. The boat trip didn't go fully to plan (I'm seeing a pattern to our trips), after about an hour of cruising over a river we found ourselves confronted by a massive mangrove blocking our route. Our captain was not phased by this and floored it straight through the mangrove!!! As you can expect we finally came to a stand still stuck in the middle, brilliant! The next hour consisted of the boat men digging us out with various methods which saw us free but wait what's that??? The captain had wraged his steering wheel so much it broke. He then took it apart, fiddled about a bit and then re-assembled, forgetting one screw which a passenger found later on (no worries we don't need that bit!)
We then went on our merry way which took us 7 hours in total including a 15 min stop to a floating cafe which had the most amazing toilet; a small hut hanging over the water with a hole in it! As we arrived into the Battambang port (a hill) we could hear some shouting and cheering, I thought there was some sort of party going on but no this was the many tuk tuk and taxi drivers shouting for our attention, I found this hillarious but it got even more funnier and slightly scarier as the boat pulled up they all ran onto the boat to get us to stay with their guesthouse!!! On our boat trip we met Cassie and Ciara, two cool Irish girls who are coming to the end of their year trip, we ended up going to the same guesthouse as them and also spending the next two days hanging out.
Once we got booked into our guesthouse we then went for a walk to find our bearings, after a coversation with the guesthouse Tuk Tuk driver (more on him later). Battambang is a nice little town with a busy market and a few bars but a lot quiter than Siem Reap which was a nice break.
The next day we decided to meet up with Cassie and Ciara and do a couple of the sights, we were then greated by the guest house tuk tuk driver - Burney! Who asked us if we wanted to do a trip with him, this was the third time he'd asked us and to be honest we just wanted to do our own thing and fobbed him off with 'we'll think about it' As we were having a fruit shake and waiting for Cassie and Ciara they both came out with a bemused face, Burney had told them we were waiting for them to then go with him to the sites... um what? We went off for lunch and laughed about it untill I heard a Tuk tuk pull up beside me "Hey Mike!" Burney had followed us (stalker) and said he hasn't had any work for 5 days and needed the money. As horrible as it sounds I fobbed him off again as I was shocked and a bit freaked out! We managed to loose him during lunch but spent the next day looking over our shoulder for a Burney shaped shadow!!!
After lunch we flagged down a tuk tuk driver, not Burney, and managed to get our trip for a lot cheaper. We also managed to stumble across a really cool driver who gave us a mini tour around the city with comments, perfect. He showed us a monument; after the Khmer Rouge had collapsed the local people called for an arms collection and collected all the weapons used in the civil war. Everyone gathered in Battambang and burned all the arms, they all wept as they knew the war was over. Once the fire had stopped a few locals collected the melted metal and created the monument as a symbol of the cease fire, I thought this was really cool but I think our Tuk Tuk driver told the story better.
He then took us to the grand finnally which was the bamboo train, oh my goodness this was AWESOME!!! It's the only train track going through Battambang (for now anyway, they are building a high speed one at the moment) and they do tourist rides, the 'Train' is basically an empty wodden bed frame which sits on two wheeled brackets that speeds accross the track, it was actually quite scarry! But loads of fun, we stopped at a local village and hung out with the locals for a bit which was really nice and then made our hair raising journey back!
Battanbamg was short but sweet, but now it was time to start celebrating - 30 is nearly here!
Mx
No comments:
Post a Comment