With only 1 day left before our return to Phnom Penh and our ineviatble journey home, we had no real plans until meeting our guide Nicky! As a local, we knew he would be able to show us some of the non-tourist sights around Battambang. He picked us up as arranged at 10:00 and we let him guide our morning.
Our first destination was a fairly long tuktuk ride out of the city – stopping at a temple called Ek Phnom. We were the only visitors on the site which had a stunning gold-roofed temple alongside it and a massive stone Buddha. However, the real reason for Nicky bringing us here was the hidden temple – Wat Ek Phnom – built before Angkor Wat in the 11th century, which totally blew our mind.
The advantage of having a local guide was that he was able to point out tiny details that we would have missed on our own. After talking us through the site he left us to explore on our own, including the present temple and inside the base of the giant Buddha. Nicky joined us here to take some pictures of his own, beautifully shot images of the Buddhas.
Our next stop was a roadside shack on a rural dirt road. The family living there handmade rice papers that were sold all over the world to make spring rolls. Nicky talked us through the labour intensive process that was completed by the mother with the rest of her family milling around helping with the more manual tasks. The rice is soaked until it is soft then the whole mixture is drained through a Muslin cloth; the liquid is discarded and the rice paste is turned with a little water into thin, flat pancake sized discs. These discs are translucent and transferred to large open work wooden panels (like a garden trellis) to dry in the open air. Once they are dry they are collected together and packaged up. A small stall on the road sold freshly prepared spring rolls and Nicky brought us a plate of both fried and non-fried for us to snack on – it was great to know that the rice paper on our spring rolls had been made only 2/3 metres away.
As we left, Nicky told us he had left something specifically for the end of our trip. He then took us towards a school, stopping just short of the entrance at a walled monument. He had brought us to the Well of Shadows, a memorial to the 10,000+ locals murdered at the nearby temple and the adjacent killing field. It would have been easy to dismiss this as just another memorial, but the bas-reliefs around the base were the most graphic and horrific we had seen; English commentary enabled us to read in silence which made it even more poignant.
After leaving the monument, Nicky made one last stop before returning us to the hotel, pulling in at a local fish market. The weather wasn’t too hot and sticky, but the smell of fish and the processing of them was still pungent, but it was an interesting insight in to the life of the locals that worked there.
With the smell of rotting and processed fish still with us we hopped abourd our Tuktuk and made our way back to our hotel and a short walk to a local coffee shop to unpack and chat about our mornings adventure with Nicky.
We knew that we had to do the inevitable – pack our suitcases properly ready to leave! To finish off our time in Battambang, and congratulate ourselves for packing our case, we took the hotel tuktuk into the central market. This was a wholly different experience to both Phnom Penh and Siem Riep; as there were no tourists at all in town, just locals picking up fresh fruit, veg, meat and fish at the array of stalls. We wandered down to the Sangker River that divides the city and then back round the market to look for some dinner. We had heard about a local restaurant called Coconut Lyly that did exceptional Fish Amok, so we headed there. Luckily we were the only diners and after placing our order the owner appeared and sat with us as we ate, chatting about how Covid had effected him, his business and his family. As with all Cambodians, he accepted that it was all out of his control, but he was so happy to be back working in his restaurant and wanted tourists to know that Cambodia was open again. We had the best meal of the holiday in this small backstreet restaurant – spring rolls, fish amok and 4 beers for just $12 – and we loved chatting idly to the owner, something we will remember this for a long time.
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