The photos are of countryside around Battambang and rice paper making - like for Vietnamese spring rolls. One hundred rice papers sell for US$1 at the market.
It's 5.20 here.
I've had quite a busy day.
I changed guest house this morning - the one I was in last night was OK but the one I am in tonight gives free shuttle service to the boat to Siem Reap tomorrow.
I asked at the new hostel about a guide last night to do some motor bike touring around the Battambang countryside. I asked them if they knew someone old (old by Cambodian standards isn't very old) who knew history well.
The guide that I got fitted the bill perfectly.
He was 19 when the Khmer Rouge came to power and was evacuated from Phnom Penh to the countryside.
I didn't ask too much about his family, but he said he was the only member of his immediate family who survived. His father had been a professor which was seriously detrimental to longevity under the KR. His life was much like Dith Pran's in the Killing Fields, but then Dith Pran was played by Haing Ngor whose life was also very similar. I think for most city people life was much the same: utterly miserable. The people that survived must have been very tough, independent and determined but also lucky.
He took me to an 11century temple that the KR had made a pretty good fist of destroying, a monastery that was turned into a torture chamber with a so called 'killing cave' nearby where victims of the KR were thrown from a great height into a deep cave and a temple that is known as mini angkor wat.
He knew a lot about local vegetation and the medicinal uses of it - I imagine under KR life learning how various plants could be used would have been essential. We drove through a lot of picturesque countryside on some very good roads and some that were almost untrafficable due to the muddiness and the potholes.
Tomorrow I am planning to catch a boat from Battambang to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), apparently it's very scenic.
The boat leaves at 7 and I think the bus out there leaves at 6, an early night is probably in order.
I've had quite a busy day.
I changed guest house this morning - the one I was in last night was OK but the one I am in tonight gives free shuttle service to the boat to Siem Reap tomorrow.
I asked at the new hostel about a guide last night to do some motor bike touring around the Battambang countryside. I asked them if they knew someone old (old by Cambodian standards isn't very old) who knew history well.
The guide that I got fitted the bill perfectly.
He was 19 when the Khmer Rouge came to power and was evacuated from Phnom Penh to the countryside.
I didn't ask too much about his family, but he said he was the only member of his immediate family who survived. His father had been a professor which was seriously detrimental to longevity under the KR. His life was much like Dith Pran's in the Killing Fields, but then Dith Pran was played by Haing Ngor whose life was also very similar. I think for most city people life was much the same: utterly miserable. The people that survived must have been very tough, independent and determined but also lucky.
He took me to an 11century temple that the KR had made a pretty good fist of destroying, a monastery that was turned into a torture chamber with a so called 'killing cave' nearby where victims of the KR were thrown from a great height into a deep cave and a temple that is known as mini angkor wat.
He knew a lot about local vegetation and the medicinal uses of it - I imagine under KR life learning how various plants could be used would have been essential. We drove through a lot of picturesque countryside on some very good roads and some that were almost untrafficable due to the muddiness and the potholes.
Tomorrow I am planning to catch a boat from Battambang to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), apparently it's very scenic.
The boat leaves at 7 and I think the bus out there leaves at 6, an early night is probably in order.
1 comment:
hope you are getting plenty of photos
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