It will be an amazing experience to everyone who wish to see outside of Battambang. Along the way to the North of Battambang about 17 Kms from town, you will see very exciting landscape. To me even I was born in countryside but my favorite place is field and countryside. Whenever I live in town and I felt stress only field and countryside that can make me better and fresh my feeling. I really like to visit countryside. I hope you guys will have the great opportunity to bike with us to the country and have a lot of more field knowledge from me or from other guides, due to most of us are born the countryside. All our tour guides are students at the university. Working here help us a lot to reach our English goal. To the countryside there many different things you will see more; especially, is to see plantation that those plantation are growing corn, cucumber, chili, watermelon, and so forth.
Okay please come, see, and learn us. At Battambang countryside. Don’t miss it! by the way, My name is Sopheap and I am a tour guide.

Dried banana deliciousness

This week writer and blogger Jessica Dean (of www.blacksparrow.net.au) took a ride on Soksabike and had something to say about it. Have a look below!

As a tourist, it can be hard to break through that invisible barrier: you are an outsider and you are cocooned as a traveler. How do you get into the groove of a place and really immerse yourself in an experience? Your passport is always the people. Yesterday we took a bike ride into the villages and rice fields surrounding Battambang courtesy of Soksabike.

It was hot – April’s the hottest month here – and we cycled dusty back roads and lanes choked with jungle, passed through villages, dry rice fields waiting for the wet, beautiful pagodas and a memorial to a horrific past. Thanks to Phearon our guide, we got to stop, talk and meet with people who are making their living, raising their families and working within their communities for their communities.

You may ask how truly authentic an experience can be when it is fleeting, guided, easy. Authentic to me was cycling along roads lined with kids out in force water bombing passers by as part of the tail end of Khmer New Year celebrations. It was catching that cheeky kid’s eye as she defied the adult authority of Phearon and his waving arms and threw the water at us anyway. It was hearing that shrieking, joyful, rebellious laughter. It was stopping and sharing a home cooked meal with a family and watching a bizarre TV show where the Khmer Army line danced, fully armed, along with hundreds of their comrades. It was joining everyone for a nap afterwards, swinging gently in our hammocks to escape the height of the afternoon’s heat. It was drinking rice wine that burned my throat and made me sweat buckets and walking through the thick pungent air of fish fermenting in their tons in a dusty shelter. It was sitting quietly sharing palm hearts with a farming family and chatting to their teenage daughters as they texted on their mobiles. And it was talking with Phearon, our guide, and sensing how much he’d suffered but knowing that he along with the rest of this amazing country have a bright future ahead.

It takes years to really know a place, but if you want to break that outsiders bubble, it’s always the people that are happy to show you the way.

This training has included everything from mock tours around Battambang town to countless role plays, scenarios, sharing of experiences, hands on bike maintenance and more.

But I would like to share just one highlight of the training session from yesterday that was brought to us by none other than Soksabike’s vision ambassador Khou Sothea.

He was leading a training session on best communication practices with the Soksabike team, leaders, guests and families we visit on tour.

To introduce the training he asked all of us to pull out one hair from our head. We then had to tie one knot in this strand of hair. Now comes the tricky part… He asked us, “please try and see if you can untie the knot.”

Sothea training the Soksabike guides in best communication practices.

Meanwhile I’m thinking to myself Geeze, this must be just another natural skill for all Cambodians that I don’t know about while I’m looking at the tiniest of all knots not knowing where to start.

I looked around and everyone else was staring puzzled at their tiny knot as well, so I was not alone after all.

One guide then said, “I have done this before,” and demonstrated to everyone how to get the knot out of their strand of hair. This involved holding the knot in the crease of your hand, closing your fist over it while banging it on the other hand repeatedly.

If you do this enough times your knot loosens enough for you to untie it.

Sothea’s ‘moral of the story’, so to speak, was to remind the new guides that it is okay to feel overwhelmed and not sure how to do something when you are learning new things. He said, “because it is through this training and practice that you will gain the experience to do your job well. See now you know how to untie the knot it is not as difficult. This is the same approach you should take while you are learning to become a tour guide.”

Training has definitely not been short of unforgettable moments like these. Thanks to the Soksabike team for delivering a fantastic training program so far for our new guides.

Well it was exactly that, an ‘attempt’. However, we did stumble across an amazing fishing conservation project in a village called Rohal Suong. With the team still keen to show guests the livelihoods along the Tonle Sap Lake, we set out for Bak Preah by boat 2 weeks ago, as promised!

Among the team of explorers for this adventure was Sothea, Sopheap, Alex and Jan.

A quick side note: Jan is from Germany and recently spent 2 1/2 weeks volunteering with Soksabike and was the mastermind behind our second expedition to Bak Preah. He did an amazing job and we recommend you follow his cycling adventure across South-East Asia.

We left Kinyei HQ at 6.30am on Saturday morning the 25th of June but this time by bicycle and carrying a lot more gear, as we were prepared for a sleep over in Bak Preah.

The plan…

To ride our bicycles 14km to Rohal Suong Village where we change our mode of transport to a boat and get escorted all the way to Bak Preah by Rohal Suong’s community leader, Mr Jomroen.

Soksabike's community liason consultant, Sothea talking with Rohal Suong leaders

We made it!

Fishing industry along the Sangker River

Not only was the weather perfect for our bike ride to Rohal Suong but we got to spend the morning learning about Rohal Suong’s community projects from the community leaders. The Rohal Suong community is quite progressive and ahead of it’s time in terms of their level of environmental and wealth creation knowledge and awareness. Their projects include:

• A fishing conservation dam 3m deep and 50 metres in diametre and that provides 800 people with fish all year round.
• A community bank with nearly $10,000 worth of capital and 106 members where the majority of loans are related to farming and moto taxi businesses.
• A reforestation project where the community are replanting flooded areas and have started to see their fish supply increase as a result.

Soksabike’s guides and the Rohal Suong community want visitors to Cambodia to learn about these projects and how it is improving the livelihoods for families of the Rohal Suong community.

Boat to Bak Preah

After a banquet of fish, soup, veggies and of course rice for lunch we took a 3 1/2 hour boat trip north along the Sangker River and made it to Bak Preah.

We were greeted by the Vice Commune Leader, Mr Ou Chan and the Village Leader, Mr Deng Saheim who invited us for tea. We discussed the potential for Soksabike to bring guests to Bak Preah and were taken on a tour of the village all the while learning about the businesses and situation of the people.

Jan and Sothea enjoying some rice wine with Bak Preah's community leaders

We talked about guests getting to:

• See the stilt housing unique to floating villages
• Learn about the fishing industry
• Go fishing Cambodian style
• Help prepare traditional Cambodian food
• Spend time with some families in Bak Preah
• Play volleyball
• Camp out in the community hall

The visit to Bak Preah was also extremely challenging in parts for me and the Soksabike team, as the Bak Preah’s community leaders shared their struggles as a community situated on water for half the year. This isolation has caused a lack of education infrastructure and makes it difficult for Bak Preah to get their farming produce and other products to market. The most critical issues Bak Preah is currently facing is the river running out of fish, as so many livelihoods are dependent on the fishing industry. We are now thinking long and hard about what this community really needs and is tourism the right solution for this community? Are they ready for a potential influx of money and resources?

Housing in Bak Preah - built for the rainy season when it becomes a floating village

It was a fascinating 2 days being immersed in a completely different way of living in comparison to dry land Cambodia and we were thoroughly looked after by both the Bak Preah and Rohal Suong communities. They are keen to work with Soksabike and it would be one of the first exposures these communities have had to organised tourism.

Highlights of the trip:

• Building the relationship with both villages as it certainly developed over the the course of the trip and by the end we started to get much clearer information and insight into their expectations and needs.
• Rohal Suong not being interested in financial compensation for hosting guests on a home stay but rather compensated through skills sharing – they would like Kinyei to teach 7 of there members computer and proposal writing skills.
• Learning how to grind rice flour using a traditional grinder (tobal kun).
• Having a round of rice wine or 5 with community leaders from both villages and them pulling a brand new DVD player out of a Sony box and connecting it to a car battery to play Khmer music videos in the dark where there is no electricity – bazar contrast of worlds!
• Learning how the fishing community survive and are working to combat the fish shortage.

Kids in Bak Preah fascinated by Sopheap's camera and photography skills

Traditional rice grinder for making rice flour

Challenges for the new tour:

• Analysing the potential economic and development impacts (both good and bad) that tourism exposure will bring to Bak Preah.
• Ensuring we give guests a ‘day in the life of a countryside Cambodian’ experience without overwhelming them.

Where to from here:

• Maintaining and building on our relationships with Rohal Suong and Bak Preah.
• Start computer training with Rohal Suong community leaders in September.
• Test the road for cycling to Bak Preah after the rainy season.
• Do an impact study on tourism in Bak Preah.

It would be great to get your thoughts on our new community development 3 day bicycle tour by sharing what you want to do, see and learn about in countryside Cambodia.