Daytrip Around Battambang

Where the hell was Philay?

The friendly old guy with a face as wrinkly as an elephant's butt was nowhere to be seen. He'd seemed a reliable enough guy, giving us a lift in his tuk tuk the day before and handing us his business card. Smiling like a mafia businessman, he'd said, "Tomorrow, I can take you around Battambang. I hope you give me a job to do." So, the night before, I spoke to him on the phone and asked if he could show us the sites. I should've known from the blaring music and drunken cries in the background that he'd have some recovering to do the next day. As a result, he was a no-show.

There was, however, another tuk tuk driver waiting for us, claiming to be his son. I hadn't brought my DNA testing kit with me, so we settled for his word and let this younger, much smoother-faced fellow drive us around.

If he ever gave us his name, I didn't care to remember it, and I didn't care to ask for it again. Hereforth I shall refer to him as The Howler. Why the name, you ask? Because this guy was incapable of talking at normal, human being volumes. Unlike some people who have slightly louder voices than others, this guy was intent on shouting every time he spoke - especially, it seemed, when he wasn't driving. But I digress.

The Howler took us around the outskirts of Battambang, the town we've been in for the past five days now. We got to see how people in the area make all kinds of local foods the tough, traditional way, such as rice paper, rice noodles, fish paste (really, just fish heads crushed with a big stone till their eyes have popped into juice and the rest of them is soft enough to spread on toast), and sticky rice. All the while, The Howler explained - with God-angering volume - each individual process. By the end of it I was in need of some space.

Enter the famous Bamboo Train.


What happens when you attach a cranky, 10-year-old motorbike engine to a rickety frame of bamboo? The most famous train in Cambodia! Not even half a meter from the ground, the bamboo train bumbled its way along tracks that weren't even straight. At times they barely met the next stretch of track, and we'd be bumped into the air a few inches. More than once I thought we were going to derail. The whole time, the train vibrated something crazy. At one point the intense vibrations put my bum muscles to sleep and I thought I was going to soil myself. Giving back to nature, and all. Anyway we sped at surprising speed over 7km of track, had a rest stop, and then back again. As noisy as that engine was, it wasn't half as annoying as when we got back to our tuk tuk and The Howler said, "LET ME JUST FINISH MY CIGARETTE." I swear, a frightened flock of birds erupted from a nearby tree.

Our last stop for the day was Phnom Sampeau, the site of what are now called the Killing Caves. An 11-year-old boy named Hayn took us down the vine-draped stairs into the cave and explained the history: here, the Khmer Rouge (the genocidal regime that ran Cambodia from 1975-1979) bludgeoned people to death before throwing their bodies off the ridge and into the cave. Not exactly a kid's playground... or perhaps it shouldn't have been. But after he was done with the history lesson, Hayn just wanted to play. As we bounced around the cave like kids, I felt the hollow skulls in the display cages watching us. I'd like to think they were smiling at us, being so light-hearted and carefree in a place where so many people once suffered. But then again, even skulls that have rotted in a cave for several decades look like they're grinning. And, had they thoughts, I can hardly imagine them thinking, "Wow, this is great! Looking forward to the next 50 years in this dank cave!"


It's just as well The Howler didn't come into the cave with us. Can you imagine if he said something and it echoed all around? Even the skulls wouldn't be smiling then.