Battambang
ASIA · SIESTA SIDE
Cambodia's second city and its most likeable: shophouse streets the French left behind, a bamboo train, and a circus school that raised a generation.
The plan
Bamboo train (norry)
A bamboo platform on wheels that clatters down a single track. The purpose-built line near Banan is the one running for visitors now.
📍 Map & photos · €
Phnom Sampeau at dusk
Climb to the killing caves and the hilltop pagoda, then wait below as millions of bats pour out of the cliff in a ribbon at sunset.
📍 Map & photos · €
Phare Ponleu Selpak circus
The original school where Siem Reap's Phare performers trained. Shows most weeks at 7pm; campus tours run on weekday mornings.
📍 Map & photos · €€ · Website ↗
Colonial quarter walk
Around 800 protected buildings line the riverside grid: shuttered shophouses, an art-deco market, and cafes in the ground floors.
Wat Banan and the countryside
A five-tower hilltop temple up 350-odd steps, ringed by rice fields, with rice-paper and fish-paste workshops on the road out.
📍 Map & photos · €
Getting there
Bus from Siem Reap
Three to four hours by road, with frequent minivans and coaches. The local airfield takes no commercial flights, so this is the way in.
River boat from Siem Reap
Six to seven hours down the Sangkae River past stilt villages. Runs in the wet season when water is high; slow, bumpy and worth it.
Bus or train from Phnom Penh
Five to six hours by coach. Royal Railway's northern line stops here too, but the timetable is thin, so check before planning around it.
When to go
Best time to go
November to February, dry and mild for cycling the rice-field lanes.
Cheapest months
May to September; rain, but the river runs high for the Siem Reap boat.
Priciest & busiest
Late December and Khmer New Year, when Cambodians travel too.
If you've got one day
Morning
Coffee in the colonial quarter, then a slow walk of the riverside shophouse grid.
Late morning
Out to Wat Banan: the climb, the five towers, and rice fields in every direction.
Lunch
Roadside noodles or a Khmer set lunch back in town, then wait out the worst of the heat.
Afternoon
The bamboo train, with a stop at a rice-paper or fish-paste workshop en route.
Evening
Phnom Sampeau for the bat exodus at dusk, then the 7pm circus at Phare Ponleu Selpak.
Nearby & day trips
Kamping Puoy reservoir
A Khmer Rouge-era dam 35km west, now a picnic lake where families rent bamboo platforms over the water. Lotus flowers in wet months.
Ek Phnom temple
An 11th-century sandstone ruin 11km north, half-collapsed and lightly visited, reached through villages and a big modern pagoda.
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