Battambang

Our next stop was Battambang, a smaller city in the western part of Cambodia. The first day we decided to walk around the city to explore the French colonial architecture and the street art by various Cambodian artists depicting Cambodian culture. We finished the day with cocktails at Miss Wong 🍹

The next day we did a cycling tour with soksabike to explore Cambodia's countryside around Battambang. Our guide Sawith was a 20-year-young guy and he did a really good job showing us around. He works during the week and attends school on weekends.
We stopped at various houses where Cambodians showed us how they produced their food - we learnt how to make rice paper, dried bananas, palm sugar drinks, rice wine and sticky rice (a popular dessert). It was a fun day cycling around and spending the day learning more about Cambodia 🚴‍♂️

Our last day in Battambang started off with a cooking class. Before spending time in the outdoor kitchen, we bought all the ingredients at a local market. The dishes included famous local ones: yellow mango salad, fish amok (a fish curry steamed in banana leaves) and beef Lok Lak (beef with vegetables).
Our chef spoke really good English and while eating, we learnt a lot about his past (he was a refugee in Thailand during the Khmer Rouge regime for 11 years) and about Cambodia's current political situation. It was definitely a fun and interesting cooking class 👩‍🍳

In the evening we visited the Phare Ponleu Selpak circus (which translates to "The brightness of arts") 🎭🎨
Today, Phare is a non-profit arts and circus school located in Battambang that empowers children, youth, and communities through artistic, educational and social support programs.
The school started out as a project introduced by the French humanitarian aid worker Véronique Decrop in the 1980's. She went to the Thai refugee camps, where Cambodian children lived after fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime. Many were traumatized after experiencing the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge or losing their families. Decrop's idea was to heal the kids through art. She offered drawing and painting classes in the refugee camps to help overcome their trauma. After the camps closed, Decrop and some of her students continued the therapeutic art work in Battambang, where they decided to open a drawing school. The project grew bigger and nowadays over 1000 students are empowered every year through the school's programmes such as performing, visual and applied arts as well as vocational training. We were amazed by how one person/ a small group of people can create something so meaningful and important ♥️ The show was great and we had a lot of fun watching the students perform 🎪🤹‍♀️

After a lot of great experiences, our stay in Battambang unfortunately ended with food poisoning (probably from a street food sandwich). Hence, we had to extend our stay there and shorten our time in Phnom Penh 😷Baca lagi