February 24, 2011 Battambang, Cambodia

Left Siem Reap for Battambang today. 

Got a room at the Royal Hotel, which is one of the oldest and more famous ones in the area. It was cromulent - nothing to write home about. Right away we were offered a sunset trip on the bamboo train. Since that was the reason we decided to visit and sunset is a nice time of day, we say yes.

The bamboo train is awesome! It's an old system of using the crappy train tracks. People build these bamboo platforms, place them on some wheels for a train track, attach a small motor and off we went. A French woman joined us on the journey.

Before the trip

Ready to go!

In motion - it went way faster than I expected it to.

At the end of the journey out we stopped at a brick factory, but since it was so late in the day the factory was stopped. We met a family who sold beverages and snacks. There was a huge group of girls who were learning to make bamboo jewelry and honored us with some of their creation.

On the way back we caught up with some other train platforms that were watching the sunset. We did a kind of caravan back, which at times made me nervous. We were traveling at probably 20 mph on an unsecured bamboo platform at very close distance to the unsecured platform ahead of us.

The bamboo train was definitely one of the more fun quickie things we've done on our trip.