Bamboo train
Ancient House
Fruit Bats
Bat Cave
Banan Temple
Battambang Statue
My travel companion had fallen and injured her knee. After seeing she was resting and safe, I thought I might engage a tangible tour guide to show me something of Battambang, a regional town in the Northwest. Like Mr Vanna’s carefully displayed assortment of books, each place gathers and presents that which might be tradeable. The special places, modest or magnificent, with which to ply the tourist trade. Commercial, certainly, yet not without dignity and honour. People must live. The list above comprised the local equivalent of the grand tour.
Khmer Arts and Crafts
Out of time
Sampeah
The New Kitchen
Downstairs, Ms Roeung seemed a little less remote (had I been observed, unobserved?) She asked me where I was from. When I answered “Australia” she replied “Queensland?” I hadn’t mentioned it, but I guess I wasn’t the first person to observe the similarities between the stilt design and the traditional Queenslander. Motes of commonality floating in the vast space-time continuum that separates her history and culture from my own. Occasionally, they catch the light.