Battambang

Battambang is a town that has a lot of French architecture in its downtown area. It’s sort of a tourist destination. We boarded a bus in Siem Reap, it was about a three hour ride. We stayed at a quaint little bnb downtown. An artist and a chef own it. Fascinating men. Morrison, the artist and Kat became instant friends as you can imagine! He is a weaver, textile artist, makes tassels, and is a painter. Kat had actually seen his work at an art show. He makes ink from lotus blossoms. The process takes two years for it to cure. Then he uses lotus stems to paint with. He showed us his studio and I noticed a diploma on the wall that was from Washington State. There are Cougs everywhere! Robert is a world class chef that was trained in Switzerland. They have the bnb with three rooms and a small gift shop filled with interesting bric-a-brac. That’s the name of the hotel if you need a place to stay in Battambang. Bric-a-Brac. They have preserved the architecture of the building and put glaze over all the tile and original paintwork. We had breakfast on the balcony each morning. French bread, butter, and local jam. They went to the local Khmer bakery for Kat for gluten free pastries. You are pretty safe if you have a gluten allergy and stick to Khmer food. It’s all made out of rice flour. We found a local coffee shop for the best chai I’ve ever tasted, had lunch and met our tuk-tuk driver to head out to ride the bamboo train.

 Now this needs to be on everyone’s bucket list. We drove through back alleys and over dirt roads (Kat does not seem to even notice, I always think we are going to be kidnapped and left for dead on the side of the road) and arrived at a dead end in something that looked like a junk yard. You give the $5 to the man and he puts his train together and you hop on. It’s a bamboo platform that sits on two railroad wheels and attaches to something like a boat motor. You sit on a pillow and off you go. When you run into someone coming the other way, you stop, who ever has the least people gets off, you lift your platform off, they take the motor off and the train wheels and let the next train or trains go by. He goes really fast! The country side was beautiful and we stopped at a little village and bought some souvenirs. You know how I used to say Lindsay was a baby magnet? Well, Kat is like that with grown up people. Especially Khmer people. No, I take that back, with all  people! They love her! She and  this sweet lady talked for about 25 minutes on every topic under the sun. Mainly they talked about my skin, how young I looked, how old was I (they are obsessed and not afraid to ask) and what she did for a living. When she tells them in Khmer that she works for an NGO the lady nearly broke down in tears and went to get her neighbor to tell her all about it. She had Kat repeat it all to the neighbor. Then they both hugged her and thanked her for helping Cambodia. I’m practically in tears once I figure out what’s going on and buying more and more to support this poor little family that lives in the middle of nowhere.  I know...great marketing device, get to the mom. It really was amazing watching my daughter in this exchange, not grappling for a word, just like it was her everyday language. WOW. Definitely one of the best days of the trip except for all the other days that were the best day of the trip. Where did this girl come from? It was even more fun to ride back, jump off, take it apart, reassemble, and get back on. Our hair was flying it was a little like being on the down side of a roller coaster. Our faithful tuk-tuk driver Peter, was waiting for us (I’m never sure) and took us back to the hotel for a rest.

He picked us back up at 6:15 to take us to the bat caves. I thought, yeah whatever. Bats are not my favorite. I did not have a fishnet or broom with me, which is how my sister and I always dealt with bats at my grandmas house. We got to the mountain just at dusk. The little dirt road was lined with plastic chairs and drink stands. I thought ok.... then it started. Out of a huge crevice they started to come. I mean trillions of bats. It went on for at least 30 minutes. If you’re missing your bat it is probably in Cambodia. The pictures ar amazing. We should have brought an umbrella. They just came out in a steady stream like a flock of birds. They are headed to the river and the jungle to hunt. Then just before sunrise they all return. Look it up!
We found a cute little French restaurant around the corner run by a Frenchman and his Khmer wife. He look so just like Gerard Depardieu. Wild hair, nose and all. Great food, really good pina colada.  Again we fell into bed exhausted!