My guide book descrubes Battambang (what a great name!) as an 'elegant riverside town'. Its not. Its dusty and grey and my room only costs me a dollar fifty. However, it does have a bamboo railway, making a trip to the town worth while.
On a disused train track a bamboo platform is placed on two pairs of wheels and run by a small motor stuck on the back. The tracks are so bent I'm surprised the whole thing isn't derailed. When I look down the line I can see huge wobbles where the two rails become significantly further apart from each other and then closer together again. When two cars meet, the one with the lowest number of passengers is dismantled (the passengers having gotten off) and laid on the side of the track while the other car passes. Then it is put back together, wheels placed on the tracks first and then the bamboo platform on top, and everyone carries on.
It goes quite quickly, 15km/hr apparently, and the tall hedges which block the Cambodian country side from view but create an exciting tunnel effect rush past and whip my legs whenever the car hits a bump and veers to one side, which happens a lot. After about 20 minutes we stop at a small village, which consists mostly of t-shirt shops and cold drink stands. I have a look around, although there really isn't much to see (the point is the ride itslef, not where it goes), before our platform is turned around and we head back to Battambang. On other parts of the line, bamboo trains are still used by locals for transportation of rice, animals and themsevles between rural villages.
At a loss to the town's only tourist attraction, the bamboo train is due to be discontinued at the end of the month in order to prepare the tracks for a passenger train between Popiet and Phnom Penh. I don't know much about trains (if only I knew someone who did!), but I'm pretty sure that the only way an actual train could run on those tracks is if they pulled them up and started again.
On a disused train track a bamboo platform is placed on two pairs of wheels and run by a small motor stuck on the back. The tracks are so bent I'm surprised the whole thing isn't derailed. When I look down the line I can see huge wobbles where the two rails become significantly further apart from each other and then closer together again. When two cars meet, the one with the lowest number of passengers is dismantled (the passengers having gotten off) and laid on the side of the track while the other car passes. Then it is put back together, wheels placed on the tracks first and then the bamboo platform on top, and everyone carries on.
It goes quite quickly, 15km/hr apparently, and the tall hedges which block the Cambodian country side from view but create an exciting tunnel effect rush past and whip my legs whenever the car hits a bump and veers to one side, which happens a lot. After about 20 minutes we stop at a small village, which consists mostly of t-shirt shops and cold drink stands. I have a look around, although there really isn't much to see (the point is the ride itslef, not where it goes), before our platform is turned around and we head back to Battambang. On other parts of the line, bamboo trains are still used by locals for transportation of rice, animals and themsevles between rural villages.
At a loss to the town's only tourist attraction, the bamboo train is due to be discontinued at the end of the month in order to prepare the tracks for a passenger train between Popiet and Phnom Penh. I don't know much about trains (if only I knew someone who did!), but I'm pretty sure that the only way an actual train could run on those tracks is if they pulled them up and started again.
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