And that is how my trip started: Sunday morning 7 a.m., Tegel airport, being extremely tired and here they are: my parents!!!
As always, they were so excited about my trip that they left Leipzig at 5 am only to drive to Berlin and say me goodbye (I was very relieved to see that they did not have any suitcases with them!).
My friend, Doreen, joined me in Frankfurt and then we flew to Bangkok with a stopover in Abu Dhabi. Since we already anticipated that we would be running out of time, we only spent one day in Bangkok and then took the early morning train to the Cambodian border.
The train is for free for Thai nationals, but it was not as crowded as we expected it to be and we managed to get very comfortable seats next to a window (that would open) and a van (that worked).
We were warned about all the scams involving overcharging tourists while "helping" them to arrange a Cambodian visa, so once we got to the Aranyaprathet (Thai) - Poipet (Cambodian) border crossing we managed to avoid all these friendly helpers and got away with only a small bribe to the Cambodian border officials (seriously, we did not see any way to enter the country without paying it...).
Walking into Cambodia:
In Poipet, we arranged a ride in a shared taxi to our first destination Battambang and didn't know yet that very soon we were going to have our first typical Cambodian experience. After waiting for about an hour for more passengers wishing to head into the same direction, our driver finally came over very excitedly. Other people started squeezing into the car that would be used for four adults in Germany and in the end we were nine (!) people in that car - five adults and four (vomiting) children. It was a fun ride and everybody seemed very excited to be travelling with that two big German girls. The German girls on their part were very happy that Cambodians are only half their size :-) Sorry guys, no pictures of that ride, but there was no way we could have reached our cameras...
Battambang, although being Cambodia's second biggest city, is a tranquil town with beautiful colonial buildings.
The next day, we rented some motorbikes in order to discover the surrounding villages and of course stopped at some of the many temples (most of which were actually built only recently with donations from Khmer living in the USA and Europe).
During our first days in Cambodia, it was still so hot that we enjoyed every second we could spend on the motorbikes taking advantage of the (unfortunately not cool) breeze:
Every village in the area around Battambang specializes on producing a different product. So we visited one village specialized on producing rice paper that is used for making spring roles which is an incredibly hard (imagine being that lady below having to work over an open fire all day long when it is already 40°C without that fire) and underpaid work.
Another village specializes on producing sticky rice which is baked in bamboo on an open fire and an easy-to-transport sweet dish.
Last but not least, we visited a village that produces fish paste which is used for nearly every Cambodian meal and you should all be very happy that pictures do not capture smell :-)
Very dangerous lady using two knives at once:
We had a funny experience with these two girls: for us, they work in an horrible (dirty) environment - surrounded by fish heads, fish bones, fish scales and fish smell. However, they looked at us very shocked and could not understand how we could be so dirty - and our clothes was only dusted by the half-day motorbike trip!
After seeing (smelling!) so much fish paste, we were easily convinced to take a ride on the famous Cambodian bamboo train. The train connects several villages and consists of a bamboo-covered platform and two detached axles with wheels.
Whenever meeting traffic in the opposite direction, the train that carries less passengers has to be dismantled and let the other train pass. So we were quite happy to have these three guys on board:
Some of you might have thought, I still look all the same? No way, I finally got new hiking boots!!! Don't worry, I still have my old ones stored away carefully at home - there was no way I could have thrown them away after all that we have been through :-)
Opposing traffic carrying less passengers:
The train led us through a typical lowland Cambodian countryside - rice paddies and palm trees:
That little girl did just not want to stop playing "build-stone-piles" with me, but then our train was leaving.
Overall, the bamboo train was kind of a touristy experience (we did not meet any locals transporting their goods on the trains but only other tourists taking a ride), but given that the government plans to shut it down in three months time, it was worth trying it.
After that long day, we were ready to go back home and have a cold shower...
... drink some fresh fruit shakes...
... and get a massage (this one was given by blind people and was a rather painful experience...).
