Battambang and the Bamboo Train

After leaving Phnom Penh our next destination was the sleepy old French colonial town of Battambang, in the north west of the country. This meant yet another fun bus journey along what are generously called ‘National Highways’, dodging cows, buffalo, dogs, chickens and small children, all of whom seem to avoid getting run over – but only just! On arriving in Battambang we struck lucky with our hotel; the nicest we’d had in Cambodia so far, with a roof terrace where we spent the early evening watching the sun set over the town.

There wasn’t a huge number of sights to see, but the next morning we hired another tuk-tuk driver and headed off for our first stop which was the Bamboo Train. This is less grand than it sounds, and is really just the abandoned railway line built by the French in the 1800’s being put to use by the locals. A metal frame resting on 2 sets of wheels, rigged to a go-kart engine is probably the best way to describe it, and they are used to move goods and people from village to village along the line, as well as taking tourists for a ride for a slightly extortionate fee! It was all quite pointless but good fun and surprisingly fast. Since there is only one set of tracks, meeting someone coming the other way means one of the drivers having to completely dismantle their train to let the other one pass, but thankfully we always seemed to get the people we met to do it instead of us! Click here to read more…