Battambang

Battambang's name is popularly explained by a legend of a man who seized power with a magical staff of black wood, an origin story retold on statues around the town. The province was part of the Khmer Empire, and Wat Ek Phnom, built in the 11th century under Suryavarman I, and the hilltop temple of Banan survive from that period in the rice country nearby.

From 1795 Battambang and Siem Reap were governed from Siam, and for more than a century the province was run by a line of Cambodian governors loyal to Bangkok. A French treaty returned it to Cambodia in 1907, and the French turned it into the country's rice capital: they laid out the grid of streets by the Sangker, built the market, the governor's residence and the railway to Phnom Penh, and drew in Chinese and Vietnamese traders whose shophouses still line the centre. During the Second World War the province was annexed to Japan and then handed to Thailand, returning to Cambodia after the war.

Under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 the town was abandoned altogether, its population forcibly evacuated into labour camps; the caves of Phnom Sampeau became a place of execution. After 1979 the north-west remained unsettled for years, with fighting, refugee camps on the Thai border and heavy mine-laying across the province. Peace in the 1990s brought back the rice trade and the railway, artists trained in the camps founded schools in the town, and Battambang gradually became known for its architecture, its arts and its quiet, rather than for its war.

Battambang has a reputation across Cambodia as a town of artists, singers and teachers. Phare Ponleu Selpak, founded in 1994 by Cambodians who had learned in the refugee camps that art can help people past trauma, teaches art, music and circus to local children, and its circus graduates perform both here and in Siem Reap. Galleries and studios occupy several of the old shophouses, and the town is often called the cradle of Khmer film and popular song, with many performers of the 1960s born or raised in the province.

Religious life is strong and visible. Pagodas stand throughout the town and in every village around it, monks collect alms in the early morning, and the major festivals — Khmer New Year in April, Pchum Ben in the autumn and the Water Festival in November — empty the shops and fill the pagodas and the riverbank. Wat Kor and the surrounding villages keep older wooden houses used for family ceremonies.

Manners are those of provincial Cambodia: greetings with palms together, modest dress at temples, shoes left at the door, and a general quietness in public. The province's history is recent and personal, and the Khmer Rouge period is discussed by many people with directness but is not treated as entertainment; the memorial caves at Phnom Sampeau are visited quietly.

The city counted 119,251 people at the 2019 census and sits in a province of over a million, and the pace is provincial: markets open before dawn, offices and schools work through the morning, and the hottest hours are for resting indoors. Evenings bring families and exercise groups to the riverside road and food stalls to the pavements, and most of the town is dark and quiet well before midnight.

Rice underpins everything. The province is known as the rice bowl of Cambodia, and milling, trading and transport to Phnom Penh and Thailand shape the economy, alongside maize, cassava, fruit and fish from the Sangker and the Tonlé Sap. Many families depend on relatives working in Thailand, whose remittances pay for houses and schooling, and seasonal migration across the border is a normal part of life. Tourism is a modest but useful addition, concentrated in the old centre.

People live mostly in low houses on wide plots away from the shophouse core, with newer development spreading along the highways and across the river. The town's continuing concerns are familiar ones for the region: falling fish catches and water levels on the Tonlé Sap system, debt among farming households, land disputes, road safety, and the slow work of clearing landmines from the countryside near the border.

Battambang eats the food of the north-western rice plain: freshwater fish from the Sangker and the Tonlé Sap, grilled, dried or fermented into prahok, the pungent fish paste that flavours much of Khmer cooking. Breakfast is usually nom banh chok, rice noodles doused in a green gravy of fish, lemongrass and turmeric and piled with raw banana flower, cucumber and herbs, or kuy teav, a clear pork and rice-noodle soup. Samlor korko, a thick soup of fish or pork with green papaya, jackfruit and roasted rice, is the everyday village dish.

Restaurant menus turn to fish amok steamed in banana leaf with kroeung, the lemongrass and galangal paste at the base of Khmer cooking, and to beef lok lak, cubes of beef served with a lime and pepper dip. Grilled river fish with herbs and rice paper, and chicken or beef with red tree ants from the forest, appear on many local tables.

The province is known for its jasmine rice and for its fruit — oranges, pomelo and longan from the orchards around the town — and a small winery lies in the countryside nearby. Kralan, sticky rice roasted in bamboo, is sold along the highways, and palm sugar and palm juice come from the sugar palms standing in the rice fields. Drinks are iced coffee thickened with condensed milk, sugarcane juice, and beer served with ice.