Our Great Adventure: Battambang Day 65 22/11/14

Another early start, quick breakfast and then on the bus to travel to Battambang. It was full of locals again plus there were two other Westerners as well. The 5.5 hour journey turned into 7 mainly due to the regular practice of delivering goods on the way. Whilst the journey was long and at times slow due to the traffic, we enjoyed the views out the window as we travelled through Cambodia. It is a very green and lush land with people mainly working in the fields. It is also looks very tranquil (the Khmer people are renowned for being very friendly) which is at odds with their recent past, namely the nutter Pol Pot, who led the Khmer Rouge from 1975, through his regime's overthrow in 1979, until his death, still a fugitive, near the Thai border in 1998. It is inconceivable that this is a place that at least 3.5 million people were butchered by the Khmer Rouge, nearly 15% of the population (remember the film the Killing Fields). As we looked out there did not seem to be many people over 60. We arrived in Battambang just after 3pm, grateful we had accepted our guesthouse's kind offer of a free tuk tuk pick up to take us from the bus station which was someway out of town. After checking in and finding out the best sights to see by the French owners we jumped into the same tuk tuk for a tour around the town. We saw the local deity, a Black Buddha, the Governers Residence, originally built by the Thai's in the early 20th century when they owned the country before the French repatriated it for Cambodia in 1909. After that we went to the town's main memorial which was in the shape of a large cobra snake and when we went closer we saw if was made of parts of broken machine guns as a symbol of peace. We then visited the railway station which is still closed as some of the line from Phnom Penh is damaged and/or mined courtesy of the Khmer Rouge. However it will be cleared and open again for business next year funded by the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. After a quick tour around the delightful French quarter which is full of colonial style buildings we stopped by the riverfront for a meal. Our guide and tuk tuk driver was a very friendly fellow called Nani, a big Man Utd fan (his only blemish) and he had a backrest which was a bear which he aptly named Rooney. We went back to our guesthouse and chatted to the French couple, who gave up life in Paris 2 months ago to buy a guesthouse here and are loving it. Whilst there are a lot of French here, both visiting and living we thought they were very brave noting their son is 5 years old and daughter is only 1. And we thought we were adventurous!