Battambang

What an awesome name for a place - Battambang.

It's a fairly well-populated city about 3.5 hours bus ride from Siem Reap.  I met Susie, a German woman, on the bus and we decided to split a room and actually have some privacy from the huge 8-10 person dorms.  It's so nice! Especially after a pretty grueling bus ride (our driver honked every 4-5 seconds. The entire ride. Babies cried), it was great to have a quiet nice place to stay.

At our hostel, we met the fearless tuk-tuk driver Net, who has a veritable chariot of a tuk-tuk to shepherd us around the area. He set up a great itinerary for us and I thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon!

We drove through a small cemetery on our way to the sites

First we went to the Bamboo Railway and had a 1 hour ride to a small village and back. It was GORGEOUS and the ride was... quite thrilling. Basically a leg massage. Our driver let us try our hand at controlling the speed, and the views were stunning on both sites. It's a bit gimmicky, but I can't complain - I loved it!

Me and Susie

Fishermen

After the Bamboo Railway, we hiked to the top of Phnom Sampeou to see the temple and amazing views. Cambodia is really pretty :)

TIGER! It's me!

Haven't you always wanted a monkey?

View from the top!

View from the top!

Giant unfinished Buddha head, carved into the mountain.

And finally, we watched huge flocks of bats emerge from the nearby killing caves. The Khmer Rouge used to put bodies in the caves, and millions of bats live there and fly out every night around 6pm. AMAZING!

The cave from whence emerge the bats

THE BATS! They're everywhere!!