Bamboo train of Battambang

After being stuck in touristy Sihnoukville due to flooding and Lou's potential dengue fever we headed to Battambang, there we hired motos and drivers for half a day through the dusty and very bumpy countryside! Amazing little villages with wooden hut houses on stilts surrounded by animals, water buffalo, rice paddies and children. Farming villagers, mostly women are working hard in the heat collecting rice from the rice fields, shouting hello and waving as we passed! I felt like a bit of a celebrity...

We visited a temple on the top of a hill, where we were led by our child that the moto driver found in the village to take us up. 'Here I've found you a ladyboy' he shouted as this little boy with longish hair came to take us up the mountain....we decided to call him Moglie and he enjoyed racing up leaving lou and I having a few moments in the heat and then skipped all the way down after we had seen the caves that were used by the Khmer rouge to kill people. It was very peaceful at the top and around the caves, people had made flowers from pieces of material as a mark of respect for those who died there. We were stopped by a monk who asked us for a little english lesson, he asked me things about the language that I couldn't even answer.....may need to refresh my english language skills before I start teaching!!

Ont the moto again and we ended up on the bamboo railway, this was a highlight of Cambodia so far! The train is basically a raft made of bamboo placed on wheels that goes along a rickety track. Where there are gaps/uneven parts of the track the 'train' bumps straight over it making a very scary loud noise! It was a rather frightening experience for lou and I with our sensitive ears who don't even like fireworks! There was a little commotion when we came across a train coming our was(there is only one track for traffic in both directions!) luckily, having 2 motos on ours gave us an advantage along with the 'train' in front being packed full of about 30 khmer women who had just finished working n the rice fields (there were 6 people on ours) those coming our way had to dismantle their train and take it off the track, along with bag after bag of rice/sugar, wait for us to pass and reassemble back on the track! There was a bit of a 15 min discussion as to who got off but they were all laughing about it and enjoyed having a stare at the white people that we are.