Battambang is Cambodia second city, on the Sangkae river in the rice belt of the north-west. It was under Thai control until 1907, which is part of why it feels different, and it escaped much of the destruction of the war years, leaving the largest surviving stock of French colonial shophouses in the country.
The town
The riverfront streets have two-storey shophouses from the 1900s to the 1930s, the Governor Residence of 1907 and a covered market of 1936. It is a town for walking slowly. Battambang has an unusually strong arts scene: Phare Ponleu Selpak, the school that also created the Siem Reap circus, is based here and runs performances and a visual arts programme, and several galleries occupy old shophouses.
The bamboo train
The norry was a local invention: a bamboo platform on two axles with a small engine, running on the abandoned railway, lifted off the track by hand when another came the other way. The original line at O Dambong closed when the railway was restored, and a rebuilt version now runs at Banan for visitors. It is a tourist ride rather than transport, and it is still fun.
Phnom Sampeau
A limestone hill 12 km out with a temple on top, reached by steps or by moto. Two things bring people here. The killing caves, where the Khmer Rouge threw victims through a skylight into the cavern below, now hold a memorial and a reclining Buddha. And at dusk, several million wrinkle-lipped bats pour out of a cliff-side cave in an unbroken ribbon that takes half an hour to pass, feeding on insects over the rice fields. It is one of the great wildlife spectacles in Southeast Asia and it happens every evening, free, at about half past five.
The countryside
Villages around Battambang produce rice paper, fish paste, banana chips, rice wine and prahok, and a half-day circuit by tuk-tuk visits several working households. Wat Banan, a hilltop temple with five towers that prefigure Angkor Wat, and Wat Ek Phnom, an eleventh-century ruin beside a modern pagoda, are both nearby.
Practicalities
Battambang is three hours by road from Siem Reap and five to six from Phnom Penh. The boat from Siem Reap along the Sangkae river takes seven to nine hours in the wet season, is uncomfortable, and is one of the best journeys in the country.