Disappearing Stick

We arrived in Battambang yesterday just before noon.  What a ride.  I think we managed to find the fastest driver in all of Cambodia.  If you Google travel times between Siem Reap and Battambang you will find that most sites estimate the trip will take between 3 and 5 hours.  We completed the trip in less than 2.5 hours.  Imagine driving 120 kph (75 mph) down a 2-lane highway while passing hundreds of scooters, bicycles, and pedestrians.  I think we spent about 1/4 of our trip in the left lane.   Arriving at our hotel, Kuro looked at his watch and let out a breath.  "Oh.  Bewwy hwastuh."  Very fast.  I nodded, "Yes.  Like Bullet Train."

We arrived in Battambang with no real idea of where to go or what to see.  Dorothy and Gordon have been here, but they took the boat and we had no idea what time they were going to arrive.  After we checked into our hotel, we found out we had a rooftop with a large terrace and at 6 stories, it is the second tallest rooftop in all of Battambang.  The view was breathtaking.  Battambang was a much bigger city than I had anticipated.  Tired from the trip, we sat in the comfortable rattan lounge chairs to enjoy the cool breeze.  After an hour, a couple of barang showed up to check out the view - Carrianne and Kate, both from the UK.  Carrianne had been working in rural village 2 hours west of Battambang for the last 5 months and Kate was a new arrival who will be working at the same location for the next 3 months.   They had spotted the terrace from another shorter rooftop and came by just to check it out.  They were on their way to a cafe and invited us to join them.  Having lived here for the past 5 months, Carrianne kindly gave us the lowdown on Battambang, with things to do and sights to see.

The name of the city - Battambang - is actually a mangling of proper proununciation and westernized spelling, "Bat Dambong".  "Dambong" means 'stick' and "Bat" means 'to disappear'.  The story goes, there was once a young shepherd boy who found a wood stick.  He found that the stick was magical and had the power to control his cattle.  But as we all know, power corrupts and the boy soon became unsatisfied with merely controlling cattle.  So one day, he used the stick to overthrow the king and take the title for himself.  The king's son had to flee into the forest where he became a monk.  While meditating, he became incredibly ill and nearly died.  Sometime later, the new king, Ta Dambong had a dream that his rule would only last 7 years, 7 months, and 7 days.  In his dream, his rule was ended when he is defeated by a monk on a flying white horse.  So he called a meeting of all holy men in the kingdom with the intention of killing them all.  The prince, now a monk but still in ill health, started the long journey off to the palace to attend.  But on the way there, a hermit stopped him and asked him to take care of his white horse while he went off to see the king.  The white horse turned out to be a magical horse and cured the monk of his illness.  One of its magical powers also happened to be flying.  So off the prince went into the sky to go to the palace.  Upon seeing him descend upon the white horse, Ta Dambong realized that his vision was about to come true.  He tried to fight anyhow using his magic stick, but the gods protected the prince and Ta Dambong ran away in defeat.  The magic stick disappeared, never to be found again.  Legend has it that it will appear again one day.

Battambang is interesting for its contrast to Siem Reap.  In Siem Reap, everything seems to center around tourism, which is only natural because of the number of foreign visitors they get.  However, in Battambang, there are far fewer tourists and so I think most people don't come to depend on tourism for their daily living.  Thus, when walking through the city, you can see many stores such as hardware stores, appliance stores, electronic stores, regular clothing stores (that don't have "I Heart Battambang" written on them), bakeries, etc.    What you don't get are shoulder to shoulder bars and restaurants with big signs in English trying to entice you to come in.  Souvenir shops are a little bit more difficult to find.  However, my sampling of Siem Reap has been somewhat limited to more touristy areas.  When I get back, I will have to try and get out to explore other areas and see how they compare.