to Battambang
One of our favorite and perhaps easiest getaways is the city of Battambang. I’ve lost track how many times we’ve gone but I just walk there, do coffee, eat. My wife loves the local market there and will spend time in the mornings chatting with people she knows. That can go for hours. The city is similar to Siem Reap yet so different. It’s slower paced and it also seems to have lagged behind in road and riverside repairs. It really never matters to me because the river walk just works.
From here to there
It’s a three hour van ride on pretty good streets. The driver will stop once for a rest break and then it’s to the downtown transit station.along the way are small villages and temples. I like the ride there. My wife likes to chat it up with the other passengers. I guess it’s life story time. Cambodian people love to talk. Me not so much. So I usually remove myself from the queue by inserting earbuds and doing music as we go.
The rest stop we reach is always the same one. If we ride the VET van it always seems to be this one place where we never care for the food. If we ride larryTA the services are better. The driver seems more careful. No matter what it still take the same length of time.
Once there it’s the same hotel which we both like. It’s situated at the market and the river. Good place for both of us. It’s easy for me to leave for the riverside walk I like doing.
The primary reasons to go are different for my wife and I. She likes this place for Indian food. I like just the getting away from the house. Battambang has nice international and local restaurants. The coffee shops I like are the little Khmer places but my favorite is Heart Coffee. It’s just down the street from our hotel.
Here’s what the walk along the riverside looks like from some walk before.
I’ll write there likely every day and share the Google Photos album when I’m done.
It’s one of those trips we never tire of I guess. It’s easy to sit here for coffee this morning and imagine the days there. Khmer soup in the morning at the market. A walk. No tourist things because we kinda got done. It’s more the going away to some place than the going toward a tourist destination.
Now it’s waiting
My wife gets ever more impatient to go and will never sleep the last night before even if it’s a place we’ve been countless times.