Day 247: Country Living

We were to leave for Siem Reap early in the afternoon, but had the entire morning in Battambang to get a feel for things. Instead of staying in town we did a tour around the surrounding countryside villages on a mix of motorbikes and tuk-tuks. The little towns in Cambodia seem to be very focused on a single product. Farming is a constant everywhere, but each little individual stretch of buildings has some special craft or food product that they specialize in.

The first place we went was the local country market. I've been to quite a few markets by now, and I didn't find the Cambodia ones all that different, beyond some different fruits and vegetables.

It briefly started to rain fairly hard, so we pulled over to a shelter at the side of the road where people were making a common rice snack. I didn't get the exact specifics of the recipe, but the principle is to take some uncooked rice, pour it down a piece of bamboo, mix in whatever else (sugar possibly? raisins?) and add some water, then stick it in the coals of a fire to cook and expand up the length of the bamboo. Then you just peel the bamboo stem leaving this bar of rice to snack on.

The rain moved on, and so did we. The next stop was a little bizarre. We stepped into the dark underground world of Cambodia's illegal bloodsport... Fish fighting! Why something that is apparently illegal is included on a tour I'm not terribly sure, but as animal fighting goes fish fighting is pretty unimpressive. Apparently the rural folk take it pretty seriously, and on fight nights there can be 20 or 30 jars/arenas of battling pairs at once. This isn't exactly fast and furious with fish tearing each other apart - fights tend to go on for 2 or 3 hours apprently, and from the 5 minutes or so we saw, progress is pretty slow. Not terribly surprising the place also had a still making the local Cambodian liquor which we got some samples of. It's strong stuff, but not as strong as the Chinese rice wine.

Further along we got to another little village by the river that specialized in fish. All along the street rows of fish were drying in the sun, and around the block people were going through various steps of making and storing fish paste (a truly vile looking /smelling product).

Having a fishing village on a river that makes dried fish and fish paste seems like common sense to group together, but the next village down the road was a bit stranger. House after house along the road was dedicated to just one product - spring roll paper. Not spring rolls - just the paper you use to wrap spring rolls in. Unless maybe some distributor comes to the area and buys up all the paper at once I don't really understand why everybody in this specific area chooses to make spring roll paper, but like I said, that's just how things are done in Cambodia.

Finally we got to focal point of the day - the bamboo train. In the early 1900s, when Cambodia was under French rule, the French built a train line through the area. The tracks are still there, but the only problem was that there were no more trains. With a little hillbilly innovation the local villagers came up with the perfect solution: take a bamboo raft, put it on the rails, and stick a motor on the back. Instant train! The ride isn't the most comfortable, but hey, it gets you where you're going. When it's time to turn around, changing directions is as easy as lifting up the train, turning it around 180 degrees, and setting it back down again.

We split up for lunch then met back at the hotel to check out and get back on the bus to go to Siem Reap. It was a pretty long ride, made slightly longer by a blown tire we had along the way. The delay wasn't as bad as it could have been, as the tire blew out conveniently/suspiciously right next to a mechanics place. After the fix we were back on the road, and got into Siem Reap in the evening.