Battambang

Brilliant day today. Went out for a rural ride this morning (everyone else went on a bike) around the surrounding areas of the city. It's really beautiful here and so lush and green. The houses are all nestled amongst the trees which must be quite dark but they looked lovely. We visited a rice paper maker, a dried fruit seller, a rice wine maker, and a fish market specialising in prahoc (fermented fish). We also stopped by a roadside stall selling a sort of rice pudding cooked in a bamboo stalk which was absolutely delicious. The fruits were also lovely but the rice wine infused with snake (to help strengthen your back) less so because it was 40% alcohol to stop the snake from rotting. It was interesting to see at the fish market that they were using fresh water farmed fish only for dried and fermented use,not to eat, because it's too fatty. I bet we eat really fatty fish all the time in the UK. We've also been in awe of how little anything goes to waste in the rural communities. Every aspect of the rice is used - the husks are used for fuel/ash in pottery, the inner husk bit pig food, and 'broken rice' (small bits broken in milling process) used for rice based products like the paper (user in the flour) and the rice wine. Once back in the city, Ankit downloaded a map of the colonial buildings so we did a tour of those which were stunning to look at but inevitably dilapidated. Next, mountainside temples. We had a brilliant guide who took us and also showed us the killing cave located in the same area. He had been 5 at the time of Khmer Rouge and told us some incredibly hard memories from that time and the impact it had on his family. Some were killed but he also explained how even post regime it was really hard to reconnect with one another as everyone fled to various places and couldn't then work out where others might be without access to phones or internet. He also said that although he loved his people he had tried to escape to Thailand to get away from the memories but they turned him away. It is so crazy to think of how many people must have serious PTSD from the time and just having to live with it. On a lighter note we also saw some of the 3 million bats that come out of a nearby cave at dusk each day. It was amazing! Coming out of the cave in swarms and they just kept coming for over 20 minutes!Read more