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The Bat Caves of Battambang (Cambodia) - Cambridge Medical Elective #08

2017-08-12 · Vlog or day in the life · Ali · recording, 5:11 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Other · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough

On his 2017 medical elective trip, Ali spends a day around Battambang with a guide: a stilt house turned museum whose family the Khmer Rouge killed, the bamboo train, two hilltop temples (one a Khmer Rouge prison above the killing caves) and the bats leaving their caves at sunset.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Breakfast and a tuk-tuk driver for the day

  • ★ After breakfast from their Airbnb host, Ali spends the day being shown around Battambang in northern Cambodia by a tuk-tuk driver. — 00:00:00 · Cambodia

00:00:15 — The traditional stilt house turned museum and its family under the Khmer Rouge

  • ★★ Most houses around Battambang stand on stilts because, as Ali was told, the rainy season brings floods and scorpions and snakes climb up. (hedged) — 00:00:15 · Battambang
  • ★★ The traditional house museum belonged to a family whose daughter and son-in-law lived through the Khmer Rouge period, which Ali dates 1975 to 1979. — 00:00:15
  • ★★ Ali explains that the Khmer Rouge killed everyone who was an intellectual, trying to take Cambodia back to a "year zero" where everyone was a subsistence farmer. — 00:00:45 · Cambodia
  • ★★★ Because the family of the Battambang house museum was full of intellectuals, about 100 of them were murdered by the Khmer Rouge; of the 100 who used to gather at the house, only about 10 remained. — 00:00:45 · Battambang
  • ★★ After the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown, one surviving woman of the family, now 77, reclaimed the house and turned it into a museum, because it reminds her of the family and the children who played there. — 00:00:45
  • ★★ On Battambang's bamboo train, which Ali had pictured as a standard train, they sit on wooden slabs along the track; at the far end Ben tries to buy a tank top. — 00:01:14 · Ben

00:01:20 — The bamboo train, two bridges and lunch at the foot of a mountain

00:02:20 — The climb to the first temple

  • ★ After an hour-long lunch, Ali climbs the many stairs to a mountaintop temple, saying people are laughing at them for being unfit. (playful, hedged) — 00:02:41

00:03:09 — The temple where the Khmer Rouge held prisoners above the caves; monkeys at the top

  • ★★★ At a second mountaintop temple near Battambang, the Khmer Rouge held and tortured political prisoners from the city centre, then killed them at the caves behind; about 10,000 bodies piled up there, and some skulls and bones are still on display. — 00:03:09 · Battambang
  • ★ The top of that temple has great views and monkeys everywhere, which Ali calls next level. — 00:03:09

00:04:05 — Waiting for the bats at sunset; thanks to the guide and sign-off

  • ★ Ali thanks their guide Nani for a wonderful day exploring Battambang. — 00:04:45 · Battambang

In the description and comments

Mentioned

Central: Battambang · Khmer Rouge

Also: Ben

Only in the description or credits: Cambodia · Sony A6000 · Tascam DR-05

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