Happy New Years... again
Wouldn't you know it? We've now had our third new year's celebration in the space of 5 months. Having lived through the normal (western) new year in Sydney and the lunar new year in Hanoi, we now had a chance to see how the Cambodians (Khmers) do it. The office here was on a two week holiday, so we used the opportunity to travel up to Battambang, get our visas renewed across the Thai border, and go to a big meeting of our organisation in Siem Reap.
Battambang is Cambodia's second largest city after Phnom Penh, up in the northwest part of the country, about 400km from PP. Work has a "welcome centre" in Battambang, and they kindly gave us a room and meals while we stayed there. We were just two more in a continuous stream of vistors to the centre, which houses admisitration and outreach buildings, a medical centre, a boarding house for disadvantaged children, wheelchair distribution building, soccer field, and a little house for doves.
The grounds are peaceful and well-kept, a good place to relax and catch up on some reading for a few days. We still had to do the obligatory touristy things while we were there, though. One of our days was spent on a motorbike tour around the countryside.
We saw a couple of Wats (buddhist temples), climbed a hill, and saw this crazy structure:
It's a massive, 3D bamboo scaffolding for carving an enormous buddha into the cliff face. They're not doing any work on it now due to money problems. The whole thing looks like it will fall over in a stiff breeze. We also took a ride on the "bamboo train". That's right, it's a train made of bamboo. Well, partly anyway. And calling it a train is perhaps giving these strange little contraptions a little too much credit. They basically consist of a little carriage improvised from local materials (including bamboo) and old train parts, and run by a motorcycle engine. They don't look like much, but they were enough to carry us and our motorbikes a few kilometers.
The bamboo trains run on what looks like an old, decomissioned track that hasn't seen and maintenance for 30 years. But it's not. It's the main train line in Cambodia, running between the two biggest cities. The locals use it for transporting people and materials short distances. Running into a real train (much to our relief) is not a big problem as there is only one a day, going either north or south. And it goes so incredibly slowly that if you see it coming, there is plenty of time to stop the bamboo train and lift it off the track. Train travel does not make a lot of sense here, especially since they upgraded the highway from PP to Battambang. It takes 5 hours and $6 to go by air conditioned bus, or 12-15 hours and about $2 by train. As for the track itself - have you heard the expression "as straight as an arrow"? Well, you'll never hear the expression "as straight as a train track in Cambodia".
The best part of the trip was talking to our tour guides. Both had lived through the horror of the Khmer Rouge days, although they were quite young at the time. My guide, "Tin Tin", told me how he was forced to lay mines along the Thai-Cambodian border for the KR when he was 8 years old.
Later that afternoon we were invited to a dance performance at a local hospital in Battambang. The dance group was trained at the centre where we were staying. They have been to Spain to dance for the King and next year will be going to flying to Australia - not bad for a few kids who grew up in very poor rural villages. At the hospital, the patients were pushed out on wheel chairs and hospital beds (including IV stands), or they just hobbled out into the forecourt.
We were then treated to some very nice traditional Khmer dance.
Next up, we needed to renew our visas by doing a brief crossing over the Thai border in a town called Poipet. Poipet is a hot, dusty, dirty, evil place. In stark contrast to the poverty of the surrounding areas, right on the border sits a couple of massive, plush-looking casinos. The visa stuff went relatively smoothly. After two hours of standing in queues, filling out forms and getting things stamped, we were done, and ready to leave. Unfortunately, leaving Poipet is not quite as straightforward as arriving. All of the outgoing traffic is controlled by the local mafia, with the result that it costs 4-5 times as much to get a share taxi out of the city as it does to come in. After another hour of stuffing around, we met a British guy who helped us negotiate a slight discount and got out of that crazy town, where a can of coke costs $4. Good riddance Poipet, on to Siem Reap.
We knew what we didn't want to see in Siem Reap - temples. We've been there, done that. Instead, we took a trip down to the Tonle Sap lake to see a floating village. The lake is a massive one in the middle of the country, and tens of thousands of people literally live on it. There are floating houses, floating markets, floating restaurants, even floating churches.
This being the middle of the dry season and a drought, the water level is very low - the lake reduces to a 3rd of its size some years.
Well, that's about enough for this post. As for the New Year's celebrations, they were fairly subdued compared with our previous two experiences. The new year ("ch'num t'mey") is a time for family for Khmers. And why not?
Battambang is Cambodia's second largest city after Phnom Penh, up in the northwest part of the country, about 400km from PP. Work has a "welcome centre" in Battambang, and they kindly gave us a room and meals while we stayed there. We were just two more in a continuous stream of vistors to the centre, which houses admisitration and outreach buildings, a medical centre, a boarding house for disadvantaged children, wheelchair distribution building, soccer field, and a little house for doves.
The grounds are peaceful and well-kept, a good place to relax and catch up on some reading for a few days. We still had to do the obligatory touristy things while we were there, though. One of our days was spent on a motorbike tour around the countryside.
We saw a couple of Wats (buddhist temples), climbed a hill, and saw this crazy structure:
It's a massive, 3D bamboo scaffolding for carving an enormous buddha into the cliff face. They're not doing any work on it now due to money problems. The whole thing looks like it will fall over in a stiff breeze. We also took a ride on the "bamboo train". That's right, it's a train made of bamboo. Well, partly anyway. And calling it a train is perhaps giving these strange little contraptions a little too much credit. They basically consist of a little carriage improvised from local materials (including bamboo) and old train parts, and run by a motorcycle engine. They don't look like much, but they were enough to carry us and our motorbikes a few kilometers.
The bamboo trains run on what looks like an old, decomissioned track that hasn't seen and maintenance for 30 years. But it's not. It's the main train line in Cambodia, running between the two biggest cities. The locals use it for transporting people and materials short distances. Running into a real train (much to our relief) is not a big problem as there is only one a day, going either north or south. And it goes so incredibly slowly that if you see it coming, there is plenty of time to stop the bamboo train and lift it off the track. Train travel does not make a lot of sense here, especially since they upgraded the highway from PP to Battambang. It takes 5 hours and $6 to go by air conditioned bus, or 12-15 hours and about $2 by train. As for the track itself - have you heard the expression "as straight as an arrow"? Well, you'll never hear the expression "as straight as a train track in Cambodia".
The best part of the trip was talking to our tour guides. Both had lived through the horror of the Khmer Rouge days, although they were quite young at the time. My guide, "Tin Tin", told me how he was forced to lay mines along the Thai-Cambodian border for the KR when he was 8 years old.
Later that afternoon we were invited to a dance performance at a local hospital in Battambang. The dance group was trained at the centre where we were staying. They have been to Spain to dance for the King and next year will be going to flying to Australia - not bad for a few kids who grew up in very poor rural villages. At the hospital, the patients were pushed out on wheel chairs and hospital beds (including IV stands), or they just hobbled out into the forecourt.
We were then treated to some very nice traditional Khmer dance.
Next up, we needed to renew our visas by doing a brief crossing over the Thai border in a town called Poipet. Poipet is a hot, dusty, dirty, evil place. In stark contrast to the poverty of the surrounding areas, right on the border sits a couple of massive, plush-looking casinos. The visa stuff went relatively smoothly. After two hours of standing in queues, filling out forms and getting things stamped, we were done, and ready to leave. Unfortunately, leaving Poipet is not quite as straightforward as arriving. All of the outgoing traffic is controlled by the local mafia, with the result that it costs 4-5 times as much to get a share taxi out of the city as it does to come in. After another hour of stuffing around, we met a British guy who helped us negotiate a slight discount and got out of that crazy town, where a can of coke costs $4. Good riddance Poipet, on to Siem Reap.We knew what we didn't want to see in Siem Reap - temples. We've been there, done that. Instead, we took a trip down to the Tonle Sap lake to see a floating village. The lake is a massive one in the middle of the country, and tens of thousands of people literally live on it. There are floating houses, floating markets, floating restaurants, even floating churches.
This being the middle of the dry season and a drought, the water level is very low - the lake reduces to a 3rd of its size some years.
Well, that's about enough for this post. As for the New Year's celebrations, they were fairly subdued compared with our previous two experiences. The new year ("ch'num t'mey") is a time for family for Khmers. And why not?posted by Brett at
11:23 pm
|
0 comments
