For $12 we hire a tut-tut to take us to an Angkor-period temple 13km outside Battambang. Our driver speaks good English and has an itinerary planned for us. First stop is the bamboo railway. This is probably the most fun you can have in Battambang without drinking alcohol! Next stop a small roadside shelter making and selling sticky rice and after an explanation from our driver of how it is made we try some and it is delicious. Further on we stop at the memorial to people murdered during the Pol Pot years. This monument stands alongside an area where many were slaughtered and buried where they fell and contains a display of human skulls and bones as well as a frieze depicting some of the atrocities carried out by the Khmer Rouge. It is hard to take in that such things could have happened here only 35 years ago. From here we make our way to the ruins of Wat Ek Phnom. Our route takes us through the villages strung along a leafy, palm-fringed riverside road. Some of the houses are little more than rickety huts with canopies of plastic sheeting, whilst others are large wooden affairs with verandas and shutters. Some are simple palm thatch houses on stilts and there are new, smart brick and rendered town houses which seem faintly out of place. Poverty and comparative wealth co-existing side by side. All along the road people are going about their daily chores: washing clothes in the river, cooking food, manning the small stalls which stand outside many of the homes. Children in their blue and white school uniforms cycle (often two to a bike) or walk to school. Our final stop is to see rice paper being made.
The bamboo railway was built by the French and runs between Phnom Penh and Poipet on the border with Thailand. These days only one train a week travels this narrow gauge line. In between times the locals run a flat-bed bamboo trolley with a small engine attached along it. It’s a single track railway, but meeting something coming in the opposite direction poses little problem – the bamboo frame isn’t attached to the wheels and both can be easily lifted of the rails and put to the side of the track as necessary. In fact as we trundle along the route we see several trolleys sitting alongside the track.. The section of the railway runs in a completely straight line and stretches across the rice paddies and far into the distance. The track, though, is warped and wavy and the trolley bumps and judders over the less than perfectly aligned rails much to the amusement of our driver who keeps turning round to check on us as if we might have been catapulted off. Along the way we pick up a man with an engine and disturb several people sitting on the track or walking along it.
The sticky rice is made by placing rice, water, sugar, soya beans and a few other ingredients into 12 inch lengths of bamboo. After sealing the open end the bamboo is placed over a fire trough to cook for a couple of hours. When ready the outer bamboo casing is cut away leaving the rice enclosed in the inner skin. It makes a perfect portable snack – simply peel away the skin and the rice is ready to eat.
Wat Ek Phnom is not a patch on the Angkor temples and is on a much smaller scale and less well preserved, but interesting nonetheless. On arrival we are immediately adopted by a young Cambodian boy called Janhay. Janhay has a cheeky smile and infectious laugh and with his broken English proceeds to guide us round the site. Sharing the site is a more recent pagoda beautifully decorated with simple frescos both inside and on the ceiling of the veranda. Alongside the site is an enormous standing Buddha towering over the surroundings.
Seeing rice paper being made is something of an eye-opener. The process, not surprisingly, is almost identical to the making rice noodles that we saw on the Mekong trip. The main difference being the mixture, which is made with rice and water. As we approach a cockerel vacates his seat on the mixing machine which is housed in an open-sided shed along with a motor bike and various other items. The mixture is cooked on a hot plated heated by an open fire and the resulting round sheets of rice paper are set on bamboo racks and left to dry propped up along the dusty roadside. This is the rice paper used to make the spring rolls that make their way onto our plates in Battambang!