Battambang By Boat

Battambang By Boat
We joined the photographers for a 3-day excursion up-country to Battambang, Cambodia’s 2nd largest city, a French-influenced province north and west of Siem Reap. We set sail on the small ferry boat early Monday morning, July 16th. Had I read the description in the tour book, I might not have gotten on the boat so easily or eagerly. The sentence, “The boats in no way meet international safety standards” does not exactly inspire confidence.

Still there were life jackets on board, scores of similar tour boats docked two and three deep, and thousands of skiffs, pontoons and other floating craft along the river bank. In fact, these were floating villages. Families for generations have lived their lives on the river, with everything they own crammed onto a covered boat no bigger than an oversized canoe. Even the schools, restaurants and little convenience stores float..

Cambodia is a country with strong knees. The people crouch to do everything. The smaller boats are rowed and steered from the very front by a person in a kneeling /squatting position. The covered house boats seem to provide no room for standing, so cooking, washing over the side of the boat, or doing any of the daily chores of living occurs from a crouched position. They even rest by squatting low to the ground.

In the Buddhist tradition, veneration is performed with the feet always facing behind the body, never in front. The monks and nuns eat sitting on the ground, with their legs turned to the side and feet tucked beneath or beside their bodies. My 50-plus knees remember with fond longing the days of the lotus position, deep knee bends, and sitting cross-legged Indian-style on the floor for long periods of time. Now I need a chair to sit on and something to brace myself with when getting up from a kneeling position.

Our boat ride took us across the northern end of the Tonle Sap Lake, the largest fresh-water lake in Southeast Asia, and up the Sangkor River, a tributary of the Mekong in Viet Nam and Laos. But it quickly turned from a leisurely glide under hot and sunny skies into a sodden crawl after a sudden rainstorm hit. The four-man crew struggled mightily to keep the passengers dry while periodically clearing the propeller of weeds, pushing off from the now narrowed and reedy banks, and steering safely around the bends in the river (someone had to stand in the rain at the front of the boat to point). Add to this the task of preventing the jerry-rigged engine from overheating. (Repeated sopping by rags doused in river water seemed to be the preferred cooling method.) But the crew worked together like a well-oiled machine, and we were none the worse for wear when we docked 9 hours later.

The highlight of our trip to Battambang was the ride on the Bamboo Train. The word train is used euphemistically, and only in the strictest technical sense. Yes, there is a train track. But dispel all visions of train cars, doors, windows and seats from your mind.

Battambang is the coconut and rice bowl of Cambodia. Its fertile soil feeds most of the country. The Bamboo Train was first constructed by the French many decades ago to transport produce and other goods to the capital, Phnom Penh. It was actually a train then. Now it’s a unique and creative form of local travel, peasant style. The “car” is a flat bed of bamboo slats about 10’ long and 8’ wide, covered with mats for seating and powered by a motorcycle engine. It runs on small steel wheels joined by a rod that look like a weightlifter’s barbells and weigh just as much.
The one railway track stretches on for miles.

Your fellow passengers are mostly farmers, local merchants and factory workers, but motorcycles, small tractors, sacks of produce and barnyard animals are also welcome and frequent riders. After a running push by one of the train crew you’re off at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour. No roof, walls, no windows, no seats. Just you and your travelling companions with trees, streams and rice paddies zipping by on either side, the wind in your face, and God in heaven as witness.

The fun really begins when your train meets an oncoming train from the opposite direction. The right of way is determined by the train carrying the heavier load. For example, five mere humans are easily trumped by 2 humans and an iron plow (even minus the ox that pulls the plow). The train with the lighter load unloads it cargo and gets completely dismantled on the spot so the other train can pass. Off come the passengers, the mats, the flatbed, and the wheels, then all back together again for the ride to proceed. So don’t forget to factor that into your travel time if you’re on a tight schedule. But one would not want to hurry on such an exhilarating ride. It is the essence of Cambodia – resourceful, cooperative, efficient and completely surrendered to the beauty of the natural world around it.

I celebrated my birthday on our return boat ride to Siem Reap. As a Cancerian, there’s no better way to spend a birthday than on the water. No rains this time, just watching life lived on a river. For these Khmer , it’s the source of everything – food, drink, cleansing, playing, buying and selling, connection and community. I thought about the wondrous places I have spent past birthdays: at the Pyramid of Gizeh, in a grotto on a Greek island, with my family in Guyana, in the mountains in Colorado, on a near-deserted beach in Mexico. I have been most fortunate to have seen the planet from many different vantage points. And maybe because it was on my birthday, all of them were holy moments. This was no exception. Blessed be.