Cambodia trip 2016 - the Rowan & Ellie Wedding Edition Pt VII
28/10/2016 - Battambang
Sleep in while Rowan went on a tuk tuk tour of the city with Mark and Rosalie before they got a VIP bus back to Phnom Penh to fly out tomorrow.
Breakfast was an incredible assortment of bready things - baguette, pancake, pikelet, French toast. And another complimentary plate of fruit. So much fruit here, especially bananas!
At 10am Andy, Nina, Rowan, Arwin and I caught tuk tuks to the Bamboo Train, which is a train in the sense that it runs on train tracks. The tracks are left over from when there used to be a railway linking Cambodia to Thailand but the rolling stock is long gone. Instead they use the wheel axles under bamboo platforms with an engine attached, the platforms are sat on top of the wheel pairs, and the motor is connected to the currently rear axle with a drive belt. The rail line is very degraded but none of it is missing, so it works. After about 15min of wandering around at the stalls at the other end, talking to kids who were desperately trying to sell us bracelets, and drinking a coconut, our train was reversed and it was time to head back to the start.
On the way back to the hotel to meet up with Ellie who was catching the bus up, we stopped off at the Ancient House, a traditional wooden Cambodian house from the 1920s, which are very rare now because wood has become so scarce. We also stopped off at the derelict main train station, which was very derelict indeed!
Lunch back at the hotel, a swim for some, then a snooze for Arwin and Andy and Nina while Rowan, Ellie and I walked to the market for Ellie to get some street food lunch and a cake for us to eat later.
Had a shower, bit of a snooze, and some yummy cream and coconut cake, and we'll meet the others for dinner at 6.
Walked in to town again, and had dinner at Jaan Bai, a very well regarded fusion style place run by an NGO training students in hospitality. Food and drink were slow but delicious. On the way home we stopped at a roadside stall and bought a bag of Battambang oranges, which are yellowy green in colour but are the best oranges in Cambodia they say. It's a shame then that most cafes serve cordial as juice instead of nice fresh local orange juice. Onward then to Café HOC, another NGO cafe run for a children's orphanage. Unfortunately they were out of chocolate powder (and the iced coffee came deconstructed?!) but the orange juice, though sweet and syrupy, had pulp in it, and apparently the lychee (litchi) sorbet tasted very lychee!
Back in the hotel we played Hanabi again, and finally won. Yay! Sigh. Practise makes perfect.\
29/10/2016 Battambang
Sleepy morning, breakfast with Andy and Nina before they caught a private taxi back to Phnom Penh.
Quick game of Sushi Go! Then Rowan, Arwin and I went for a walk round the riverbank area of the town. Bought some lotus flower seeds to try, they're quite interesting and tasty.
Relaxing afternoon in the hotel. Today is coronation day (12 years since the current king was crowned) so yesterday and/or today is a public holiday.
Around 2 we headed out to find the Choco L’art cafe round the corner, with success today. Not an extensive chocolate menu but the hot chocolate was beautiful, Rowan had dark chocolate mousse and I had a chocolate hazelnut cake. Both delicious :) Ellie, meanwhile, went back up the road to a street vendor for rice porridge! She really likes street food :)
From there we got the Delux tuk tuk to pick us up and take us via a bus company to book our trip back tomorrow, to Phnom Sampov, a temple on a mountain allegedly established by a sect of beautiful broken-hearted nuns. Climb up a heap of slippery steps, but it wasn't really that bad, and the view from the top was fantastic! The monkeys were a bit scary though, and we had been warned they are bad tempered. As we got back to the tuk tuk parking area, it was time for the bats in the cave there to go on their nightly pilgrimage to goodness knows where. The stream of bats coming out of the side of the mountain was just unending, and seemed to behave as a big 3d longitudinal wave. Smelly but very cool. One unexpected highlight on the tuk tuk ride out was a roadside stall selling roasted rats, gutted and butterflied, tail still on. Yum yum? In the way back the rain started, and got very heavy indeed. I was pretty saturated in the backward facing seat. Went from looking forward to a swim to looking forward to a shower! The nice people at the resort meet us with umbrellas though, that was nice :)
Once we had cleaned up and the rain eased we decided to venture out for dinner, and had fried flatbed and veggie noodles at a street vendor on Madison Corner, before wandering into the Sky Bar at a highrise hotel by the river for smoothies. Different nice experiences.
Back in the room Ellie and her cough went to bed while Rowan, Arwin and I played sushi go! and Set.
Full sphere from mountain-top temple
Bat swarm video I
Bat swarm video II
Bat swarm video III
Bat swarm video IV
Rooftop bar panorama