Thankfully the journey to Battambang was only 3 hours (one of the shortest yet)! We arrived around lunchtime and got going straight away. There were 2 main things we wanted to do whilst in Battambang and that was the bamboo train and the bat cave (both were phenomenal).
We arranged for a tuk tuk to take the 6 of us round for the day. Our first stop was the bamboo train which was around a 15 minute drive from our hostel. We approached the tourist attraction and although this is something very popular to do in Battambang it really wasn’t very touristy. All 6 of us managed to hop on the same bamboo train and off we went. We travelled around 30mph down the rickety train track and every time someone came from the opposite direction we had to disassemble the train and put it back together. This was so much fun and so entertaining (definitely very different to your normal train journey!) Once we had arrived at the end of the track we sat and had a drink with the local girls. They also put cute flowers in all of the girls hair (so lovely). The journey back to the start of the train track was hilarious as we had to stop and start a couple of times because people were travelling from the opposite direction. The bamboo train was great fun and I would really recommend doing it in a big group!
After the bamboo train we headed for the bat cave. Now we didn’t actually realise that you could visit the cave called the ‘Killing Cave’ as well so we decided to do this first. It was a long, sweaty walk up to the top of the cave but the historical information we were about to hear definitely made it worth it.
The Killing Cave was used during the Cambodian war. The Khmer Rouge would throw Cambodian people (even children) down into the cave, crushing and killing them. This was absolutely heartbreaking to hear and even to see. What made me even more sad was the young boy giving us the tour parents had died in the cave. This was so sad to hear.
After this emotional tour we trekked even further up the mountain to find the temple at the top. As we approached the top of the hill just before entering the temple we were approached by around 20 monkeys … this made it pretty hard for me to actually then get to the temple as I absolutely hate monkeys and they really didn’t look very friendly! But as you can see from the pictures below I made it and survived the monkey terror! And the view from the top was absolutely incredible!
The walk down from the top of the mountain was very sweaty and we were greeted by even more monkeys! But what was to come was very exciting … we sat and waited (with a beer in our hands) very patiently for the show we were about to see. At around 17:50pm the sun started to go down and you could see in the hole of the cave the amount of bats that were about to make their escape into the darkness. We sat and waited and as it started to get dark one by one millions (30 million) of bats came out the cave and flew in a line away from the cave. This was honestly one of the most fascinating things I had ever seen, it went on for absolutely ages and the pictures don’t even do it justice. It was a super cool experience and I would definitely recommend it!
After the long day we had just had we made our way back to the hostel, had dinner, played a few card games and scrabble and went to bed. We were up early again the next day as we were travelling back to Siem Reap for our final stop in Cambodia! So once again, next stop and the final of Cambodia … Siem Reap!!
Adventure Awaits... 