After arriving in Battambang, we took a walk around town for dinner. Again, since we had been on the bus all day, we had eaten a couple of oranges and some Pringles and water. Trust me, bussing your way around SE Asia is the best diet plan of all. We wandered around before accidentally finding a place recommended by our book, which promised the best shakes in Cambodia. For once, Lonely Planet wasn’t a liar. I had an exquisite banana, mango and orange shake that made me grateful that fruit exists—not to mention blenders.

The next morning, we were walking around looking for a place to have brunch (we only eat about 2 meals a day at best) and a man on a bike pulled up. He started telling us about how he took English classes at his school and would we like to come to speak to his students? Before the Grumpy Distrustful Husband could say no, I shouted, “Yes, of course!” Like my friend Wayan in Bali, this man had a kind face (I know what I said about kind faces, but I wasn’t buying anything from him) and I wasn’t going to let T deny me the chance to meet Cambodian kids in a local village. And so we arranged to meet Naranth again at 3pm to go to his village and meet his kids.

Sure enough, at 3pm he was waiting with his motorbike, so we popped on so he could take us to his village. I sat between Narath and T, and asked him a bunch of questions like the good little journo I am (or should be). Narath started the school a couple of years ago, and had only 20 students. Now there are 320, and he turned over the teaching to 12 former students. He runs the school and makes money during the day by working as a moto driver, and about twice a month he finds tourists who are willing to go to the school and make a small donation to help him keep the school afloat. There are very few tourists in Battambang, he says, and most of them don’t want to come to the school, so he finds it very hard to raise the money to keep it all going.

He brought his to his in-laws house first, where we met his wife, his daughter and his niece and he showed us his business plan for the school. Then he took us to his parents’ house, across the street from the school. His parents run a small store out of the front of their house, and his father is unable to work very much because he was shot during the war (I was unclear whether he was shot by the Khmer Rouge or he was Khmer Rouge) and now he has seizures. His parents spoke no English, but his father had just about the sweetest face I have ever seen. In addition, he had both a Red Sox hat and a Boston hat hanging in the back of his house. You see? I was destined to meet these people.

After a while, we went over to the school. Narath brought us to a classroom and told us to each start on one side of the class and ask each student some questions and to answer theirs. The kids were about 13, and more or less asked the same questions: Hello, how are you? What is your name? Where are you from? What is your job? and so on. T had a really long conversation with one girl in the corner while I covered the rest of the room. Then he was called to help teach the class as I spoke to a bunch of students who were gathered in the window. One boy attempted to teach me Khmer, to no avail, and they were all very friendly and cute. Then it was time for another class, and most of the window kids filed in and we started the process again. This time, the new teacher asked me for help with the lesson, and she asked me to define some words for the kids. Have you ever thought about the definition of the word fleshy? Because that was the easiest one. And I have two masters degrees in English.

After the second lesson, Narath brought us into a couple more classes to say hello, and then he took us back to Battambang on his bike. As usual, the people along the road on the way in and out were waving and shouting hello and I thought that if we died on that bike in some freak accident, I would die happy. In Battambang, we gave him $25 for the school (which covers the rent for one month) and told him we would be in touch. If you are interested in contributing to his program, send me an email and I will let you know how to reach him (or to join his Facebook group).

That night, we went to dinner at a local restaurant, about a block from our hotel. I ordered green curry and it was the best decision I have ever made. I never expected to have the best green curry of my life in Cambodia, but I wasn’t complaining. It was a beautiful, creamy curry unlike so many of the watery curries we were served. I would have licked the bowl, but I suspect that T would have left me there in horror and he had the room key. We went back the next night and T tried the green curry and I had the loc lac, which was not nearly as delicious as the curry, but the shake made up for it. I ordered a mango shake that was quite possibly made by God himself. It was so good, I ordered two. I’m not sure what’s up in Battambang, but they have the best fruit shakes on earth.

On our last day in Battambang, we had a little brunch and went to look for some bus tickets. Our hotel was selling them for $15 to Bangkok, but we thought we’d shop around. With no real success, we decided to get a tuktuk to the bamboo train, which is exactly what it sounds like. The bamboo train is a bamboo platform placed on top of two sets of metal wheels that runs along a train track through the rice fields. It was clearly started for the locals to transport goods between villages but somehow the tourists discovered it, and now its quite a popular attraction for foreigners.

It was a very odd experience, zipping through the rice fields with three locals guiding us. Every time we met up with another train, the guys had to dismember our train and take it off the tracks, so the other train could get past. The ride was lovely, past waterholes full of locals bathing and water buffalo crossing the tracks and farmers out in the fields. We got to the next village, stopped for some water with the locals and a quick tour of the brick kilns next door, and then got back on the train to go back where we started. It was interesting, I suppose, but I felt more conspicuously foreign than I had in a while. On the other hand, it was more unusual than seeing yet another wat.