Battambang...

Battambang is the second biggest city in Cambodia but you don't feel it once you are there. There are motorbikes everywhere but you don't feel like if you were in a big city. I arrived here by my own again, I left in Siem Reap the people I had been traveling with since Vientiane in Laos, we were going to different directions now. It was sad to say good bye, but the trip must continue.

Battambang is one of these cities that people usually don't stop. In the city there isn't any attraction, but as soon you leave the city and you get in the countryside you see the real Cambodia.

Yesterday I took a motorbike with a driver that brought me to see some temples 30 km away from Battambang. We were riding throw smalls roads, well, I don't know if I should call them roads so they were very damaged and with no pavement and plenty of cars were stuck on the side of the road. We crossed local villages and the driver was very nice and was explaining everything. He was 47 years old so he knew the histories of the places we went and we talked a lot about the Khmer Rouge and nowadays politics in Cambodia.

At the end of the day we took a ride on a bamboo train, that is an small train built from bamboo with an small engine on it. The bamboo trains have been an unofficial part of the Cambodian transport network for years using the railway network to Phnom Penh that nowadays only departs once a week. The only problem is that there is only one track so if two trains meet, the one with the lightest load has to be taken off the rails so the other can pass.

Today I've been all the day in an orphanage of children who has been injured with mines and bombs. There are 5 spanish volunteers on the orphanage and even I went to a Khmer class with them.

C iu!