26&27.11 - Days 316-7 - Siem Reap to Battambang, KHM
Tuesday 26th & Wednesday 27th November - Siem Reap to Battambang (Day 316 & 317)
A final walk of the streets, the breakfast noodle street seller pleased to see me, eaten then at Air Cafe with my usual Iced Coffee - each time ensuring no sugar as the South East Asian way seems to be to load all drinks with extra sugar.
We pack up and leave Kathryn and Kahn of Passport Villa behind, walking 10 minutes to the bus depot. Apps like 12go make it easy to book travel online, aggregating most travel operators.
Aboard our 16 seat bus (seats chosen online at the front to try and reduce the risk of Seb (or Kate) travel sickness, we depart at 11am on the dot. Either side of a midday stop our driver tries to overtake as much as possible but not as recklessly as some of our Vietnamese buses.
Past shanty villages, open markets, past disorganised rice fields missing the precision channels of Vietnam.
Arrival into a dusty Battambang, a mix of tarmac and gravel roads, a tuk tuk whisks us to Lotus Blanc Homestay on the southern end town.
Our ‘bungalow’ is in fact two separate rooms with separate bathroom, all upstairs above other guest rooms. We’ll call the accommodation tired, compounded by no pool which was so well received in Siem Reap.
Dinner is back in town via a tuk tuk at Smokin’ Pot serving a tasty dinner.
The next morning I head out to explore before it gets too hot - though it doesn’t drop lower than 24 degrees overnight - there’s a hive of scooter based activity; people hurrying to work or taking smart crisp white outfitted school children to school.
Breakfast is a banana wrapped in sticky rice, cooked over charcoal wrapped in banana leaf. I like it, but don’t get much support from anyone else.
I do get support for finding Petra Library Cafe, a cafe with books, not the other way round. This incentivises Sienna and Seb’s schoolwork plus the strawberry and chocolate milkshakes that arrive at the cafe. We find half a dozen English children’s books which keeps Sienna and Seb absorbed for a good hour.
Lunch two minutes away at a noodle cafe who have to turn cooking back on for us, followed by a banh mi for Sienna and Seb from the side of the road near our accommodation.
Two hours of down time - ipad watching, hotel searching in aircon in our room - all before the main event: a cooking class. A tuk tuk delivers us to Nary’s Kitchen where we join four other tourists, first to the market to collect some veg for the meal: Spring Rolls, Fish Amok, Beef Lok Lak and Banana dessert.
Aprons on, our teacher ‘Toot’ has everyone hacking away in their red aprons. Sienna and Seb are fully involved with their own station, more so to be trusted with large knives, more so again to smash the pestle and mortar.
The Amok in banana leaf boats are put onto steam, the spring rolls shallow fried and the beef lok lak flash fried before we all sit down to consume our tasty hard work. A memorable experience for all.
