The Tour
The tour unpacked
We’re offering a half-day guided bicycle trip which starts in the city of Battambang and quickly leaves urbanity behind. The bike tour departs in the morning and takes a relaxed 30km route along shaded roads through the countryside, making it back to town in time for lunch.
Cooking up some fresh bamboo rice cakes for Soksabike guests
Along the way you’ll meet local families and learn about their traditional livelihoods and businesses, often unchanged in generations. You will get to try your hand at local industries such as rice paper making, rice wine and snack on Battambang’s famous bamboo rice cakes in an interactive and personal experience of the Cambodian countryside.
Soksabike guests sampling the local produce
The family businesses we visit
Many of the families have been running these businesses for decades and learned the skills required from aunts, uncles, and grandparents. When asked why they chose their line of work, a few responded that theirs was a traditional livelihood in their village. For example, the village where we will visit bamboo-rice-cake makers is famous throughout Cambodia for their cakes and the prahoc (fish paste) producers who continue to produce prahoc on a traditional site though there is no longer fishing done in their village and therefore, like most other villages, they get their fish from the Tonle Sap lake and river network.
Rice feilds in Battambang's countryside that we visit on Soksabike
Tour focus – rice the staple of Cambodian cuisine
The tour focuses on rice, a true staple of the Cambodian economy and cuisine. We’ll pass rice paddies, rice mills, and see how every part of the rice grain, including the husk, is used in the production of paper, cakes, and wine. We’ll educate tourists about the two rice growing seasons in Cambodia, about the different types of rice and their uses. In many ways, the rhythm of Cambodian life is dictated by the cycle of planting, growing, and harvesting rice, as many of the families we meet create their traditional products in downtime between planting and harvesting their fields.
What else will you see and experience on tour?
Along with viewing the production of and sampling traditional Cambodian products and stopping for a fresh coconut and some locally grown fruit, we’ll also be visiting a memorial to the people of Battambang who lost their lives during the Pol Pot regime where the guides will share their families experiences during the Khmer Rouge. The cycle takes you on shaded dirt roads past banana palms and fruit orchards, along the Stung Sangker river, through villages and small, lively markets, glimpsing uninterrupted life all along the way.
