Leandra, 9 May 2012
Cambodia , Battambang 35°

Khmer New Year

April and May are strange months in Cambodia and depending on what you like to do either very good or a little frustrating. There are many holidays and although holiday is nice, it's a bit difficult to do your job when schools are closed, people are not around and you want to plan things but all of the sudden nobody is there (although they are supposed to be...).

The official dates of Khmer New Year were the 13-15 of April. This is the most important holiday of the year and comparable with Christmas. As in our countries, schools have a two week holiday. The PTTC holiday would start at the 5th of April (Wednesday), which apparently meant the 3th... Because the office staff was also still there, I was not all by myself in the office.
We planned a trip to Vietnam, because Andre was invited to Dalat to take some pictures there. On the 9th we went to Saigon (in one day, 12 hours in a bus!) and enjoyed coming back in a city we've already been too. We stayed one more day, strolled around and found the train station, because we would like to try out the trains in Vietam. Dalat is not on a train track, so we chose the nearest town (on the coast) to take a bus later on. We looked it up on the map and found Phan Rang. When we asked for a ticket there, the person behind the counter shook her head and said that that wasn't the right name... Uhm... ok, then we'll take a ticket to the place she mentioned (which was called Tap Cham) and thought we would see what happened... In Tap Cham we were the only one who got off the train, which made us a little worried. But when we showed our little phrase book to a taxi driver (can you take us to a cheap hotel), he nodded, jumped in the car and took us to .... Phan Rang! So it all came together in the end. The taxi driver dropped us off in a hotel near the beach, otherwise we probably wouldn't have known that there wás a beach . It was beautiful and totally deserted. The little town of Phan Rang is nice and we enjoyed a couple of nice beers, meals and relaxed time there. We made a walk along the beach to go to a fishermen's village, which was great! In the village we had the best ice-coffee ever and some people started to try to talk to us. Fortunately we took the dictionary and could have a little bit of a conversation.

The only bus from Phan Rang to Dalat left at ... 5 am! We managed to arrange transportation at that time to arrive at the bus station and there was even a bus! We got Chinese memories when we left at 5.15, picked up all kinds of people and luggage along the way, went to get petrol and a coffee, left for the next town (Tap Cham) and ... had breakfast . We finally left for Dalat at 6.30...
It was a beautiful trip through the mountains (the first mountains since a long time!).
Curtis King, who invited Andre, has a hotel and a very nice cafe in Dalat, and coincidentally we were in the right time to attend the cd-release party of his blues band. Many nice people were around to be part of that, so it was a really nice weekend with lot's of music and fun. Andre enjoyed not only taking pictures, but also playing with the band. We stayed for a couple of days and left for Saigon again on Tuesday. Because of some meetings in Phnom Penh we didn't return to Battambang right away, but stayed in Phnom Penh.

Today is the Royal Plowing Ceremony, the historical start of the sowing of the rice. It's another free day, as is the coming weekend, when we celebrate the King's birthday... No plans yet for those four days, but there are worse things to do than to enjoy Battambang!