The ride from Sehanoukville was about 8-10 hours, so the only bus available was a night/sleeper bus.  I was completely ok with this because that meant I didn’t have to book a hostel for that night and I would arrive in the morning with a full day for activities.  In this night bus, I got a normal double bed near the front of the bus and ended up sharing with an older western gentleman which was fine because I fell asleep almost immediately.

He got off in Phnom Penh and so I had the whole bed to myself for the rest of the journey.  I arrived in Battambang in the early morning and got a tuk tuk to my hostel with two guys from Sweden who were going in about the same direction.  I arrived at my hostel and who do I see sitting there having breakfast…. Andrei, the polish guy from Luong Prabang and Kampot.  He was nearing the end of his travels and was working on some job related stuff.  I decided to take advantage of the relatively early morning and changed into my running gear and pounded out a 13km run.

I was aiming for a reclining Buddha statue, but you had to go into a temple area and I was not dressed appropriately so I just enjoyed running by the towns people along the river.

After my run, I had a shower and decided to walk around for a bit.  Andrei and I had some Korean food for lunch and we returned to the hostel for some chill time.  I talked to a few tuk tuk drivers to get an idea what I should be paying for transportation and what I should do.

The two things I had planned to do in Battambang was go to the bat cave and see the circus.  After talking to some travelers it appears as though the school for the circus is in Battambang, and the better performers graduate to Siem Reap, so I opted to wait and see the circus in Siem Reap instead.  I did want to try and find a person to go to the bat cave with me as I found a tuk tuk driver who was willing to do it for $10 for two people where the hostel was charging $10 per person.  I ended up talking to a girl (I can’t remember her name now (whoops)) who also wanted to go to the Bat cave.  We decided to go together and so around 2:30 we met at the hostel and departed for the Bat Cave which was about 15 minutes outside of town.

The tuk tuk driver first took us to an ancient house, which was one of the oldest in Battambang.  It was owned by a family but when the Khmer Rouge forced them to leave the city and move itno the countryside, they were forced to abandon the house and the Khmer rouge took it over and used it as a staging area and kitchen for feeding people.  When the occupation was done and people started returning to their homes, only one lady from the entire family returned.  It was kind of a sad story but provided another glimpse into how much the Khmer rouge occupation affected almost everyone in the coutnry at the time and today.  It was also interesting that the large furniture was original to the house because it was too big to be stolen when the house was abandoned.

The countryside around Battambang is very flat, but there is a limestone outcropping that has a temple on the top and a few caves. (more info here http://www.tourismcambodia.com/travelguides/provinces/battambang/what-to-see/29_sampeou-mountain.htm) With instructions and a hand drawn map from the tuk tuk driver, we headed up the mountain to see the temple and some of the sites.  Our first stop was the killing cave.  During the Khmer rouge occupation, they transformed the hill into a camp and would throw prisoners from the top of a cliff into this cave as a way to kill them.

It was a bit morbid and they even had statues showing examples of the torture techniques the khmer rouge would use on the prisoners.  We explored the top of the hill for a few hours which included another cave and some monkeys as well as several more buddah images.

We then descended before sun down to get a good spot to see the bat cave.

The bat cave is a large cave in the hill that contains several million (I hve also heard billion thrown around) and every night they all leave the cave in a constant stream that lasts several minutes.  They head out to look for food and then return before day break.  There are several food stalls and restaurant lining the street with a view of the cave.  We grabbed a table ordered a beer and a snack and waited for the bats to emerge.

Around 6:12, the first bats left the cave and for over 30 minutes, there was a constant stream of bats leaving the cave.  There was thunder and lightning happening all around us but it did not rain.  Overall the experience was super cool and I am glad I made the stop in Battambang to see it.

We had hired a tuk tuk driver to take us out there and he was waiting, so once it got a bit darker and the bats were harder to see, we headed back into the city.  I met Andrei at the hostel and we headed into town looking for street food.  We found a night market and another traveller who we invited to join our table.  It was a pretty low key night and we all headed back to our hostels after eating.

The hostel was really cool because you had a private room, but it was incredibly tiny which was fine given the privacy.

The next morning I woke up for a short run through the town and then opted to get a tuk tuk to take me around to the countryside.  Again, our hostel offered a tour, but I negotiated with the same tuk tuk driver from the night before and he took me for cheaper.  I had a 3pm bus to Siem Reap, so he picked me up at 8:30am and we were off.  I had no idea where we were going or what we would see, but you could tell he was proud of his town, because he brought me to a lot of places and was very happy to share facts about everything.

The first stop was the Catholic church in town.  The driver says his dad went to school here and is catholic, but he was buddhist.  I wondered around a little bit but didn’t go inside.

Next up he took me to a kitchen, where a sizeable operation was underway.  It was a weekend and I had already seen several wedding celebrations ongoing and this place was making desserts for the weddings in town.  They let me try all of the various desserts.  Many of them were coconut based but they also had some honey desserts as well.  I enjoyed tasting all of the various desserts and seeing each persons individual role in the process.  It seemed to be a true family business as were most of the places we would stop that day.

After the kitchen, we took off outside of town to an old temple that was in rough shape.  It was falling apart pretty bad but was still neat to look around.  It was called Baset temple and was pretty far out of town, but cool to see.

Next up we headed to a more modern temple called Wat Samroung Knong which was a pretty standard temple until you read the sign and understand the history.  During the Khmer rouge time, they took over the temple and used it as a prison camp and killing field.  They would take prisoners here, interrogate and torture them and then kill them and put their bodies in mass graves located in the back.  It is a very similar thing to the killing fields in Phnom Penh and apparently there are hundreds of such camps dotted around Cambodia.

It was another somber place to visit, but also a great history lesson.  They built a stuppa there but it started to crumble, so in the early 2000’s a new one was created to hold some of the bones found in the mass graves.

From there we continued to a place that made bamboo sticky rice.  They cut up large pices of bamboo into serving size pieces, push sticky rice into the opening and then wood fire cook it.  You end up with a serving of sticky rice in a easy to eat package.  I had one at the place and bought one for later.

From there we moved on to a place that made fermented fish paste.  When we arrived there were about 5 people all cutting up the various types of fish in different ways to prepare them for the making of the paste.  From what I could tell, the fins and heads were chopped off and the rest of the fish was cut into smaller pieces before being ground up, placed in giant containers and then fermented for a few months.

The tuk tuk driver told me that it ends up being pretty sour and was used in traditional Khmer sour soups.  They didn’t have anywhere to try the final product and I never ended up getting any during the rest of my travels which was a little disappointing.

From there we headed to a place where they were making rice paper, which is the main ingredient in spring rolls.  They showed how they used rice flower mixed with water to make a dough of a certain consistency and then a stretched canvas with a fire underneath for heat.

They would spread the wet dough over the canvas very thinnly, then let it sit for a few seconds.  They then used a stick to release the paper before putting it on a drying rack for the rest of the day in the sun.  It’s a pretty simple looking process but still requires a bit of skill to get right.  This place did have a restaurant in the front, so I got to try both the fresh and fried spring rolls.  Kind of neat to get the rice paper fresh from the source.

From the rice paper place we stopped at a family run business making dried bananas.  They would slice the bananas very thinly and weave them long and wide strips which they would then lay out in the sun to dry for a while.

It looked like they had a bunch of banana trees on their property, so it appeared they also grew some of the banana they used.  We also had some mango while there, which was good.  I bought a strip of banana as well as some of their sweet dried banana which was also for sale.

After the banana place we headed up to a place that made rice wine.  They had two stills going and used standard (probably not food grade) buckets to ferment the rice in.  The tuk tuk driver and proprieter were not that great of explaining the process but I’ve done enough distillery tours to figure out what was happening.

I was then offered to sample some of the offerings.  One was straight, one was a version with several snakes soaked inside and one had ginger and other roots soaking.  The straight one was for sure the most harsh with the snake and root versions not having as much of a bite.

I thanked the people for the tastings and tour then headed to the next stop, which was the last one of the day.  It was another crumbling temple and giant Buddha statue.

By the time we were done it was almost 2pm and my bus was set to depart at 3pm.  I went back to the Hostel and gathered my belongings for the bus to Siem Reap.  All in all for spending only one night in Battambang, I feel like I saw and did a lot!  The one thing I opted not to do was the bamboo railways which was apparently pretty cool in the past when it was very sketchy and rickety but is now upgraded and more of a tourist attraction.  The railway cars were constructed of bamboo and there was only one set of tracks. So when two cars came head to head, the one with less people/cargo, would disassemble and then re-assemble when the other car went by.  Would have been cool to see but I came across someone else that did it and they said it was skippable.

The bus to Siem Reap promised to be pretty short, so shouldn’t be too bad.