Battambang

The first town that I visited in Cambodia was Battambang, which is the second largest city in Cambodia but still quite small. However the only reason I came here was so that I could take the boat to Siem Reap (the town where Angkor Wat is located) instead of having to take a bus over some supposedly terrible roads.

I arrived in Battambang in the early afternoon and decided to spend the rest of the day touring around small villages surrounding the city. However since it was late afternoon when I was touring around, most of the activities that we were supposed to see where finished for the day such as making rice paper and bamboo sticky rice. We did get to stop and try a local snack of fried snake and palm wine (the palm wine was made from sap from palm trees), and we also got to visit a place where they were making fish paste. However other than those couple of sights the rest of the tour was just spent driving around the country side which was still quite nice.

The next morning I awoke and went to catch the boat to Siem Reap. The boat trip was very good, at least for the first few hours, as from the top of it you could see lots the locals out along the riverbank going about their daily activities. The boat went through a narrow river channel for most of the trip (passing other oncoming boat traffic was very interesting as the channel was so small) and eventually came out on Tonle Sap, the large lake in the centre of Cambodia. Although the boat trip was fairly enjoyable it became quite boring by the end as it was 7 hours of sitting on a boat seeing the same thing over and over. However I was told that it was much better than the bumpy road that was the alternative so it was a worthwhile trip.

The next stop was Siem Reap and visiting the world heritage site of Angkor Wat for the next few days, update to follow shortly.









Some kids at a road side stall where we got to sample the fried snake (in the bowl on the right) and palm wine.














A shot of the road that we were driving down with Rene (one of the guys I was traveling with) in front.












A shot from the boat to Siem Reap of some farmers plowing their fields using an engine pulling them while they stand on a board that plows the field.








A kid that was poling his small boat along side ours, this was just before we entered the huge lake so no more narrow channel as you can see.