What can we say? Bats, bats and more bats. We never got tired of watching them. Or of marveling at the Cambodian village of Phnom Sampov, where their major bat cave was located.

The one store we shopped at rather often — pretty much the only actual store at which to buy household supplies such as our fan — was an interesting little emporium with an odd assortment of merchandise, covered with a layer of dust (it was next to the main road in the village, and, like virtually all businesses in town, had an open front). So when you bought something, the attendant would first dust it off before turning it over to you.

One day when we went there looking for some item or other, the attendant was a young man who spoke perfect American English, with a southern accent. When we asked him where he was from, he drawled “Memphis, Tennessee. I’m here visiting relatives.” Small world, since Dennis once lived and attended school in Memphis. (But you ain’t heard nothing yet; wait until you hear about Kimberly’s coincidental encounter when we were leaving Cambodia a few days later.)

After already living and teaching in the village for several days, we finally discovered that we could purchase a SIM card very cheaply from a roadside stand near our school. And after that we not only had phone service, but (oh joy, oh bliss) Internet access, without having to lug our laptops to the school.

Meanwhile, Dennis had experienced the latest development in his global dental odyssey, breaking a tooth on a very soft piece of fruit (one of the two adjacent teeth he’d had root canals performed on back in Phnom Penh). Getting a recommendation from the school principal for a dentist in Battambang, he contacted our trusty old tuk-tuk driver Pao, who drove him there, went inside to serve as interpreter, and helped him complete the paperwork — even supplying his own address, as a local address was required. Unfortunately, the tooth could not be restored, so it was extracted, leaving a gap in the bite. (And since we’re usually not in one place for very long, it would be 9 months before the gap could be filled, when we returned to Phnom Penh for an extended time.)

But Back to the Bats

If you want to go watch them fly out of the side of the mountain at twilight, you have to pay an admission fee of two dollars to access the viewing area next to the cave.

Or there is another option, which we decided to try. Just around the corner, as it were, there is a path on the side of the hill where many people climb up to witness the swarm of bats just after they leave the cave. It’s a pretty spectacular vantage point — and it doesn’t cost a cent (or a riel).

It’s not hard to find the path, because there are always a dozen or more tuk-tuks parked there, waiting to pick up their passengers and take them back to Battambang, from which most of them come.

So once again we saw the flight of the bats; and they must have wondered why we keep stalking them, and why we can’t make up our minds about which stakeout location to use. But we got a slightly different perspective, perhaps an even better one than before. Of course, one thing that greatly enhanced the performance was that this time it was done by the light of the full moon. It doesn’t get much better than that.

2/5/2023