Cambodia - Battambang - Catching Up Part 7

This catching up series in now reaching the end of January. I hope you're enjoying a moderate influx of pictures. Now this post's gonna flow and show you a tree that bears bats as fruit. What? Yeah! Keep checking out the pictures. This part starts on a boat over Cambodia's biggest lake. After a week in Siem Reap, the time has come to see some floating villages and head to Battambang. Not that Internet connectivity was that great in Siem Reap...

Ready for the boat trip? There's always someone happy to overcharge you barang (foreigner) for food. Good morning :)

No worries, floating shops heading your way. Better prices than pirates ;)

The floating villages are beautiful. The toilet is simply a hole in the floor and the toilet cleaning is done by hungry fish. Then the fishermen kill the fish and the humans eat it and so the carbon keep cycling around.

Since I saw this sign for the first time, I kept looking for the party but nowhere could I find the exact date and location. Probably have been missing Cambodia's biggest rave or sth :p

In the pastoral settings of floating villages, far away from factory farming, pigs are confined to cages smaller than jails we provide for our most horrible criminals. Animal abuse is so much in our nature. You can ponder on this food for thought over some bacon and ham.

Showers are not very private but at least the fish get to eat some soap

Some big ass trees on the river bank holding on to the bits of land still out there.

Hello! Hello!!! Hellllllloooo!!!!!

Enlarge this picture and suggest a good title in the comments. The winner of this non competition will win a Coconut-Jackfruit shake.

Smoking is good for you and makes you look cool even at elderly age. Got a light?

Gotta take some temple pictures. Cambodian ones have a different style than the Thai ones. I'm sure you care about it a lot.

Dunno bout you but I feel better going to a dentist who knows how teeth look like than to one who doesn't. This advertisement surely proves this dentist knows.

One of the biggest perks of Battambag in waiting in the glass on the left. It's a coconut-jackfruit shake that I dub one of the best fruit juices of my life. It's SOOOOOO good that I've had 2-3 a day after I first tried it.

After trying the coconut-jackfruit juice, you'd wanna stay and live the rest of your life in Battambang. Here's the local equivalent of wanted ads. Enlarge this one and see how much you can make a month in Cambdoia. On second thought, you might not be able to afford as many juices...

Lotsa gold but the jewel in green ;)

Different green... RICE

Stylish smiling cow is sure as hell happy to have you eat its flesh. Marketing at its best.

The fruits on this tree are bats!

These bats are called flying foxes and the X35 optical zoom on my camera helps understand why.

and that's the nearby backyard from where I took the picture - mind you a real "free range" chicken

and yes, it's the backyard of a local house - a clean and safe playground

Some minutes away, a vineyard welcomes tourists

Behold the BAMBOO TRAIN - previously a mode of transportation in a country that seems to be unable to afford bigger carriages now made a tourist attraction. When the Japanese group you see crossed our path, we had to get off the "raft", the "driver" dismembers it, they pass and then our "carriage" is re-constructed on the other side.

Been a while since I've taken pictures of my feet. Got a whole series of those.

Sunsets are always good, right?

of course they are, you love them!

There's a circus in town. Frequented by tourists, this circus tries to offer an interesting career path to the youth of the city. The show was quite nice altogether.

Tuktuk drivers need a back rest and Mr. Pooh is happy to help

now if you got all the way here, you surely deserve one of the world's greatest shakes (or juice, nothing dairy) - COCONUT-JACKFRUIT. Remember this as it is the password you should use to reach heaven!