Battambang

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Goodbye Thailand – Hello Cambodia!!!

We left our border hotel in Aranyaprathet relatively early, and, after getting a coffee and spending the last of our Bahts on fuel, we headed towards the border. The whole process of leaving Thailand and entering Cambodia was easy and took about 1.5 hours. Details can be found in the Logistics Section of our blog: Leaving Thailand and Entering Cambodia.

And there we were: in Cambodia!

Our first port of call was Battambang. The road was good in most places, but every so often it would sort of disappear and major pot-holes would appear. Along the way we were overtaken by about 9 overland vehicles cruising in convoy, quite a bit faster than us. Apart from our future travel companions in China, we did not see any overland travelers during our 2 months there. In contrast, we were in Cambodia only a few hours an we already had seen some. They had Swiss and Italian license plates, all in various forms of Toyotas and all with roof top tents. They were not the friendliest of people and we had to work hard to get a wave out of them. After looking them up on the internet, appears that their itinerary includes Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia all to be completed in 3 weeks, no wonder they were moving fast. And it is not clear if they actually own there vehicles, or they are supplied by the tour company.

Battambang is our kind of town. It was not long before we had found a hotel (Banan Hotel) and were out on the streets getting a feel for the place. The first surprise was getting money from the cash machines: they dispense US dollars. Then we discovered the town runs on US dollars. Well, that makes things easy. The second surprise was the price of beer. During happy hour beer is 50 cents a glass or $2.50 a pitcher. Well it was hot and it is important to try the local brew, so we did.

Battambang Urban Sunset.

Friday, February 28, 2014

That morning we explored 3 sites in the vicinity of Batambang.

First we drove to Phnom Sampeau: a temple and limestone caves situated high on a hill, and thus providing great views of the surrounding area. It’s eerie and serene at the same time: the caves were used as slaughter chambers by the Khmer Rouge; and there are buddha shrines.

Next we went to Wat Banan, known as a ‘mini Angkor Wat. It’s a 12th century temple with 5 towers on a 400m hill.

Lastly (and totally by chance as we had given up trying to find it and were on our way to our next stopover point) we happened upon Wat Ek Phnom (11th century), not as grand as the famous temples, but worth stopping at.
At the first entry point we bought a US$3 day ticket that gave access to all 3 sites.

For lunch we returned to Battambang before driving on to Sisophon.

Phnom Sampeau.
Wat Banan.
Ek Phnom.