Battambang continued...

This continues from my previous blog......

Along the road were bamboo mats with thin slices of banana drying in the sun that would be fried later for banana chips.

 Rice paper making is a family tradition that may very well disappear with the advent of technology. At this stop we watched two women working in synch making rice paper for spring rolls. One woman squatted over a bowl of hot rice paste cooking on a rice husk fire, the steam blowing in her face.

It looked hot and uncomfortable especially in the heat of the day. A scoop of rice paste was poured onto a flat cooking pan and rounded out to make thin rice paper. The woman would then place a lid over it for steaming. It was steamed for the length of time it took to repeat the process on a second pan. The first lid would then be removed and placed over the second rice paper. A wooden spatula would lift the steamed paper off the first pan where it would be placed onto a rotating bamboo wheel.

The second woman would take the bamboo off the wheel and unroll the paper onto the bamboo mat. This woman was also responsible for stoking the fire, transferring the filled mats to the sun, removing the dried paper, and rotating the bamboo wheel. Their momentum never broke.

The women worked nonstop spelling each other off as needed. The heat, the fast pace, and the long hours require a great deal of stamina. I certainly couldn’t imagine working in that position with that heat for that many hours. Often on this trip I feel so lucky to have been born in Canada and have the opportunities I have had. My complaints seem petty compared to what so many have to endure.

In keeping with our job related tour, our last stop was the crocodile farm.

We drove up to a walled compound and a young girl opened the door for us. Inside the compound, sitting on a picnic table was a large bin with two baby crocodiles chirping and squeaking away.

Seems that only baby crocs make sounds… We spent some time watching these two cuties before climbing up the stairs to take a look at the big crocs.

It was quite sad seeing the crocs all crowded together but maybe I’m just projecting - quite possibly they were happy as clams.

There were several pits each with dark murky green water in the centre with cement on three sides. Crocs would sit on the cement, totally still, some with their mouths open, until suddenly they would give a shake and lumber slowly into the water to cool off. Apparently crocodiles do not have sweat glands so sleeping with their mouths open, cools them off.

Surrounding these large pens were smaller cell-like pens where females would go to lay eggs. This was the crocodile business – breeding, laying eggs, and then selling the eggs or babies to China. Babies go for about 25 dollars each and the trusty internet states that they are used for medicine and food as Souren had no idea what China did with these eggs. Mating season is in February and the crocs apparently become very aggressive jumping up the sides of the pens; but for now they were thankfully docile (hmmm....).

When the crocs came out of the water and all the dried dirt was washed away, they had some beautiful markings on them.  It was great seeing them open their mouths wide to display some fierce looking teeth.

Lunchtime took us back into town and Gecko’s. At this point my throat was killing me and I felt pretty crappy so we headed for home, a bit early but still, it was almost 3:00. Ian handed over 20 dollars and Souren went to give him some change because our day was shorter than originally planned. We refused and went on in to our bungalow. It was a good day.

The next day we were picked up at 11am by taxi to head for Siem Reap. The thing that most tourists do is take the slow boat from Battambang to Siem Reap across Tonle Lake and we had intended to follow suit. After reading how cramped, hot, long and unsafe the trip was (10 hours with low water levels), Ian and I decided to take a taxi for 40 dollars. Considering the boat was 25 dollars each, we were getting a bargain riding in comfort with a/c on a much faster trip – and it took only 2.5 hours to get to Siem Reap.