Sights and Culture in Battambang

A few other travelers from Siem Reap had recommended a particular hostel in Battambang, so without doing too much research I made my way there from the bus stop once I arrived in the city. It was immediately evident that Battambang was far less of a tourist attraction than Siem Reap, but still a very large city (the second biggest in the country, after the capital!). The hostel was pleasant and once I arrived I quickly found myself admiring the view from the pleasant rooftop bar and restaurant. I took my first day slowly and sampled some street food at the local market before heading to bed. The next day started off pretty calm, but one of the hostel workers recommended a parade in the evening, celebrating the culmination of a multi-day street art festival. I had a nice dinner with some others from the hostel before we all joined the man from the hostel just in time to join the evening’s celebration. The parade had all sorts of local groups involved, but the most impressive group visually was certainly several people who had constructed two giant puppets, a massive white rabbit (year of the rabbit!) and an impressive dinosaur/dragon. We joined the parade and I mostly walked along behind the rabbit, even getting a chance to help push it for a little while (and use my height to push the bar up/head down to keep the rabbit from bumping its head on any of the lights stretched overhead). The parade ended at a sizable stage in a park near the river, where after everyone gathered, some shows began. There were a number of singers and rappers, certainly very talented but harder for me to appreciate because everything was in Khmer. Much better for pictures was a break dancing tournament between some truly impressive dancers- this was unexpected but super fun, and I managed to get a good spot sitting right at the edge of the dancing area. The singing and dancing went on well into the night, eventually I was quite tired and left with some others from the hostel, heading back to my room after a wonderful and unexpected evening.

I spent the next few days enjoying the city, trying lots of traditional Cambodian food and exploring the city. I ended up getting along well with several French travelers, giving me an opportunity to work on my French which up until this point stemmed pretty much entirely from duolingo. Of course I couldn’t understand rapid fire conversations, but between their English and my weak French (plus some romance language help from Spanish), we could communicate fairly well. One afternoon I went with one of them to visit a nearby mountain with a massive Buddhist temple. Sadly, this mountain was also the site of a brutal Khmer Rouge killing ground- a deep cave where many people, even babies, were thrown into the opening to die. In the years since, the cave has been opened up and made accessible. There was a somber memorial filled with the bones of the dead found in the cave when the first people entered after the Khmer Rouge era. There were many Buddhist statues, but also some depicting the Khmer Rouge soldiers killing naked men and women in various cruel ways. As we moved across the mountain, luckily, things got less sad. The rest of the temple was gorgeous, populated by monkeys (sometimes a little territorial, but no bites!) and filled with caves containing even more beautiful Buddhist imagery. Finally after enjoying all of the sights, we descended on the other side of the mountain just before sunset. The timing was perfect, because the mountain was also known for a massive bat cave, filled with animals ready to set out into the fading light for the nightly hunt. After a few minutes at the base of the mountain, the show began, and the bats began to flood out of the cave in a distinct stream. The clicks of the bats’ sonar were ever present and the stream showed no signs of stopping as they flew away from the cave. I couldn’t help but feel grateful for all of the mosquitoes they would eat before returning home after their night of hunting. After a while watching the stream (murmur?) of bats, we rejoined our driver and headed back to the city for the night.

Having seen the most famous local sights, I enjoyed one more relaxing day in the city, exploring bustling markets with all sorts of cheap and delicious food, but booked a bus to the capital, Phnom Penh, the next morning.