BattamBANG and dinner is served
An afternoon with a tuk tuk driver named Yaya, rat-hunting in the rice paddies, dinner earned with a well-aimed baseball bat.
We hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around Battambang for a day. We got to know him quite well through numerous conversations, laughs and jokes we shared. So well that we abandoned our initial plans and instead asked him to show us around his favourite spots and give us an insight into his life. After many miles in his tuk tuk visiting some extremely cool places he took us to visit his family home.
He told us a story of how (due to lacking funds) his family are unable to go to street markets very often to buy their food. Instead, they need to catch or rear their own livestock. Yaya and his brother will often go to the rice paddies near his home and use water from the nearby stream to flush out rats from their tunnels. One of them stands on the other side of the tunnel with a big baseball bat like stick... and BANG!... one strike and dinner is served. I thought it'd be rude not to try.
Another highlight was the bamboo train system. It's a single track railway on which lightweight trolleys known as "norry" transport passengers and goods. Since it's a single track when two norrys meet the lighter one is swiftly disassembled (bamboo bed with motor, front and rear axle) to let the other pass and then re-assembled on track.