The R&R Big Adventure

Dark Days

Of course I should have waited until we had actually arrived in Battambang before publishing my last post. Not long after we left our rest stop on the river, we slowed right down as the water level got increasingly lower. For about an hour we were practically punting, as one of the crew used a very large pole to push us from one side of the river to the other. We could see where this was going and eventually the crew called it a day. We all had to disembark onto the river bank, via a small boat pulled up beside us, forming a human chain to lift the luggage off the boat and up the muddy bank. As if by magic (it would have taken days for that water level to have dropped so much) a couple of dusty pickup trucks were there waiting for us. Somehow sixteen tourists, four locals, all their luggage and a couple of bikes were packed into the pickup trucks and off we trundled along the muddy track that ran between the river and paddy fields for the final 50km to Battambang. I wasn’t expecting to see this much of the Cambodian countryside on our trip. I was wedged at the back of the truck with one of the bikes strapped to the end. Its saddle was off, and the two sharp metal saddle supports were just a couple of inches from my abdomen, and every time the truck hit a hole in the dirt track (which was frequently) the bike would lurch towards me. I had to keep a tight hold of it to stop the sharp supports getting any closer. Together with having to duck at short notice to avoid being whacked on the face by the trackside foliage, it was an eventful two hours. As we drove further along the riverside we could see the water had completely dried up in parts. Clearly this wasn’t the first time this had happened: the boat company did not want to lose their valuable tourist dollars.

As a result of all this we essentially lost an afternoon in Battambang. We were only there for two nights so we wanted to make the most of yesterday. Armed with a walking tour map from the hotel we soon realized that the French colonial architecture in the old city wasn’t all that. Stopping at the market, I noticed a Buddhist monk, going from stall owner to stall owner, each of whom would produce a note for him in return for a very quick blessing. As we later found out, the monks can stop by shops and businesses seven or eight times a day. The monk was clutching a large wad of notes in his left hand. If one were being cynical one could call this a Buddhist protection racket.

We stopped by a humanitarian photographic gallery – ‘Human Gallery’ – which was recommended as a place to visit. What was going to be a short pit stop turned into a passionate 45min explanation from the owner / photographer. Trying to summarise as succinctly as possible: he was from Bibao originally, worked for UNICEF for a number of years, taking photos of humanitarian efforts all over the world, before he left to start his own round the world trip on a bike to take his own photos of human existence across the globe. He settled in Cambodia – not because he liked the country or people – but because of the need to address the continuing exploitation of children here, and the high levels of child prostitution. That is, parents pimping their own child to be abused by others in their neighbouring communities in return for money. He had teamed up with a local social worker who currently had 72 cases on her books in just two communities. They had intervened to try and support the worst 8 cases by raising money to support those children with extra education, support and family intervention. Taking the children away into care was not the answer as the state (un)funded ‘orphanages’ were the worse of the two evils (later that evening we ate at a restaurant supporting the Cambodian Children’s Trust which gave some sobering statistics on how children in those orphanages are far more likely to end up dead or in prison). This work had clearly taken its toll on him – his tired, drawn face reflected the grim stories he told us. As we left, another four tourists entered the gallery – prepare yourselves, I felt like telling them.

After lunch we had booked an afternoon tuk tuk tour, to take us to see some sights outside the city. After a short explanation of the legend of how Battambang came into being, we had our only light relief of the day: first a walk across a suspension bridge that wouldn’t have been out of a place in an ‘Indiana Jones’ film, complete with broken wooden planks and metal supports that looked like they would break at any moment; and then onto the ‘bamboo train’ – yes a train made of bamboo. Actually, it was just two wheel axles, a bamboo chasis, a large lawnmower engine and a drive belt (which linked one of the axels to the engine) that were all quickly assembled on the track as each tuk tuk laden with tourists pulled up. On we got, sitting crossed leg, and with a tug of the starter engine, the driver quickly had us speeding off up the track. I thought we would go at a model railway pace but it was far quicker than that. It was a single track, and after fifteen minutes or so we pulled up by some trackside souvenir stalls (of course) where the whole platform was taken apart and reassembled in reverse for the return leg. All silly fun.

The fun over, our guide drove us for forty minutes or so to the Killing Caves – the infamous mountain where thousands of Cambodians were executed during the dark days of the Khmer Rouge. Our guide, like the gallery owner, also liked to talk, and in hushed tones told of us how Cambodia had lurched from one corrupt regime to another in recent decades. Bribes were still endemic in public life, censorship was alive and kicking, and the current politicians (some of whom were ex-Khmer Rouge or had links to them) were selling off parts of the resource-rich country to neighbouring countries and the Chinese, no doubt in return for some healthy backhanders for themselves. And then we got on to the truly depressing stuff – separate caves for men, women and children who had been pushed, beaten or bayoneted off the cliff edge to their death (they were rarely shot as that wasted precious ammunition). Whole families would have been rounded up and taken here to keep communities under state control. But apparently these were just the caves the government lets the world see – there are potentially many more all over the country that share the same dark history. Before leaving the site of the caves, we paused at dusk to see hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of bats leave the mountain on their regular nocturnal sortie for food.

Given everything we had seen that day, I don’t know how the population, especially the young children  – who you can hear cheerfully say ‘hello’ loudly, before you even see them – keep smiling.