a boat ride to battambang

Rightfully so, the temples of Angkor are Cambodia’s main draw. The vast majority of people either head back to Thailand or cut right across to Southern Vietnam via Phnom Penh immediately afterwards.

My traveling M.O. is having no concrete plans whatsoever, just a rough idea of the places I’d like to visit. After Angkor, I really didn’t know what to do in Cambodia. I wasn’t too keen on Phnom Penh (I can’t say I’m ever ecstatic about capital cities in third world countries) but I figured I couldn’t do wrong heading to the beaches in the southwest.  And that I should do it as fast as possible.

I was lucky not to be hasty.

Battambang is the second largest city in Cambodia but that is not saying much. It’s tiny. Battambang itself has nothing special about it: the food was sub par at best, beggars abound, particularly in the market (this was the first time I had someone stand next to me constantly begging for money for the duration of my meal-make that 3 someones at a table of 6) and it’s a dirty place. It’s the journey there that is quite the experience. A bus from Siem Reap to Battambang costs just over $4 while taking a boat ride costs at least four times as much, but it is worth every penny. No matter what price you pay. (Some paid as much as $25, others as low as $17; I paid $19, yeah, thanks Eric.)

You start off very early in the morning. Sometime around 7:30am the mini-bus starts doing its rounds around Siem Reap picking up tourists stuffing as many westerners in it as possible.

By 8:30 you’re somewhere along the Cambodian wetlands ready to board your boat and shortly after that, you’re off into the middle of nowhere.

The boat has seating for about 30 people and while everyone is scrambling for a seat, the best thing to do is to pack on the sunscreen, put on some shades and head to the roof. A solid rainy season and clear skies made for a quick trip with awesome sights and steady conversation. Five hours in the blazing sun is still a bit too much to handle but you’ll find that there’s a constant rotation of people heading up and down  so there’s always a spot available downstairs.

We passed a number of villages, hundreds of little kids excitedly waving in our direction, a handful of boats being operated by children that couldn’t be over 5 years old, stopped to drop off packages and pick up passengers.

Along the way we also cut right through what seemed to be the dumping “grounds” for the many villages’ trash. Almost simultaneously, all the trash on our boat went overboard onto the piles of floating garbage and dirty water. A sad sight.

Aside from the wet dumpster and the terrible sunburn I suffered that day, like I said, the ride was worth the trip to Battambang.

By the time we caught the storm clouds we had arrived and the tuk tuk/motorcycle/minivan drivers are lined up to give us a free ride to their respective hotels. (And they will tell you before hand which one it is.)