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Noodle Soup at Banan Temple

Battambang Province, Cambodia – If I had a little more brains and a lot more inner brawn, I would tour Southeast Asia by motorbike.  We don’t need to go into the challenges of navigating a countryside lacking both street signage and maps as this fantasy shouldn’t be held too close to the light.  For the time being, I’m taking the backseat to friends or guides who know the way.  My guide in Battambang, a northwestern province that is Cambodia’s largest producer of rice, was Oud, who had agreed to take me to Phnom Sampeau (a mountain with caves that were used by the Khmer Rouge for mass slaughter), Wat Banan (a temple known as “mini Angkor Wat”), a bamboo train (whatever that would be) and perhaps a few other spots. 

Motoring away from the market, we entered the countryside where rice paddies and farms, studded with lollipop-like palm trees, extended flat across as far as the eye could see.  A huge expansive sky stretched above us suspending enormous clouds in its blue canopy.  After visiting the ghastly caves at Phnom Sampeau, we stopped for lunch at the base of Wat Banan’s hill and ordered some noodle soup with egg.  This noodle soup happened to be made with instant noodles, typically something I would avoid, but the sour, spicy broth and fresh local vegetables more than made up for the packaged goods.  Over lunch, Oud and I got to talking about the border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia centering around the Preah Vihear temple, to which each country claims ownership. 

I wanted to know if citizens thought this temple was worth people’s lives.  At first Oud reflexively asserted that the temple belonged to Cambodia, but then he pulled back. ”I don’t want to see anymore fighting,” he said with a new look of gravity on his face.   At 43, he had lived through the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror and didn’t need to see any more.  He had lost his two sisters, three brothers, his father and his mother.  The only survivor in a family of seven.  His skin had bled from fruits eaten in the field that the Khmer Rouge had poisoned knowing the desperate, starving workers would consume them.  He had watched his pregnant sister pushed to her death in the cave I had just visited at Phnom Sampeau.  Now he was competing with other motorbike operators to bring tourists to these sites.

I had finished my soup before our discussion had started; his had been pushed aside.  We smoked a cigarette and then he said, “after the bamboo train, I will take you to the killing fields, but you have to promise not to cry.  If you cry, I will cry.”  I nodded my head and we started the next leg of our tour.

Guide and Motorbike, Battambang Province

Chile Peppers Drying in the Sun

Wall Outside Temple

Motobike and Clay Pots

Tree Near Killing Fields in Battambang