Battambang turned out to be a lovely little town, untidy, chaotic but great fun to just walk around and watch life happening.
Outside town though is one of its real attractions the "bamboo railway". The pictures below explain it better than wordsNow can do, but in essence the rolling stock, and I use that term loosely, consist of nothing but two axles, a basic timber and bamboo platform and a lawn mower sized engine driving through an old fan-belt. These are all built as lightly as possible so that if two meet going in the opposite direction, the lightest loaded could quickly be lifted off the track to let the other go through - what a simple solution to a single track railway! Apparently for awhile in the eighties and nineties these were quite common in Cambodia as a simple way of moving goods up and down the countries badly damaged railway tracks. Now most have gone but Battambsngs lives on (though by the looks of it 100%as a tourist attraction rather than as a load carrier).
Riding on it is as much fun as it looks; they jolt around terribly because of the condition of the track, but still manage to hurtle on at (reputedly) up to forty kilometers an hour. Hopefully there will be a video link in this post to give you a bit of a feel for it.
After a couple of nights in Battambang we headed back to Siem Reap by luxury coach - seating arrangements were interesting.
Actually, just kidding, this was only a local bus that took us the first few k's from the town center to the bus station proper. The coach we had for most of the journey whilst tired was much more normal in its seating layout and quite adequate.
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