From Siem Reap I moved onto Battambang. I successfully bought a bus ticket and undertook the 3 1/2 hour journey through villages, small towns and past many farms. I arrived arrived around middday and running the gauntlet of touts and drivers found the Seng Hout Hotel a recommendation from the forums. A bit featureless but for $12 a night with AC and cable TV I wasn't about to argue. So I did my usual thing after getting settled and went for a walk. Unfortunately my first reaction was "what a hole". Everything looks grey and run down - not what I expected for Cambodia's fourth most visited city, not many tourists seem to make it here, from what I saw there were only a couple of dozen so if you want that frontier feeling check it out.
But Battambang had two saving graces. The first was the only gin palace in Cambodia, Juniper run by an English expat. A double shot of Tanquery and tonic cost $3. Its definetly the place to get the local lowdown. The owner also gave me a guide to Kep that he'd written as I said I would eventually head that way after Phnom Penh. The second saving grace
was a couple from Perth that I met on my first night there. I think without them I would have got the hell out the next day. With only a few more hours experience of the town than them (they'd
arrived on the boat from Siem Reap that took 9 hours - my bus took 3 1/2!) we headed out for mystery meat rolls at the night food stalls next to the river and drinks at Juniper. Apparently the countryside around the city is very nice with some temples and also has some "killing caves" used by the Khmer Rouge. I wasn't big on the idea of the caves but I liked the idea of the temples (it appeared that Angkor had not completely templed me out!). It was nice to have some good company so we planned to head out the next afternoon.
What an afternoon it turned out to be! I thought it was going to be a nice chilled afternoon in the countryside but I ended up doing more climbing of hills and mountains than I think I've done in my life. Phnom Banan (below left) is a ruined temple up 300+ stairs with great views from the top. The temples looked like they'd collapse at any moment - I'm not sure if it was natural subsidence or if they'd been rebuilt in a vague approximation of a structure. We then sped along some dusty roads to Phnom Sampeu which has a collection of wats on the top of a small-ish mountain. I naively thought we'd be driven to the top but it's so steep the tuk tuk wouldn't have made it. We could have paid to go up on a motorbike but I don't trust myself on those things so we elected to climb. And climb. And climb. And this is where the fun really started.
There was no signage at all, just a labyrinth of stairs, paths and roadways. There are active wats dotted all over the mountain of which we saw many, but the killing caves elluded us. There was a lot of misdirection on the part of the local kids and between false starts and dead ends it felt like we climbed the mountain twice over. What made it more confusing was our party got seperated so there was a lot of backtracking and searching. Long story short, I didn't find the caves but the other of the party did. We found a very eerie, deserted grotto with caves but with no evidence of human remains (she says casually). The real caves turned out to be half way down the bit of the mountain we didn't explore. The guide book had the right directions but I hadn't bought it with me. All in all, it was a grand adventure as well as an exercise in frustration! Completely exhausted we returned to the hotel for some farewell drinks on the rooftop - I was off to Phnom Penh and they back to Siem Reap. So that my friends was Battambang!
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