Culture & Experience Tours

Battambang is surrounded by agriculture, friendly locals and offers some fantastic experiences. Battambangers are a friendly bunch, so there are plenty of options see the beautiful countryside and interact with the local culture. We have listed the details of a few of the different kinds of tours on offer with some great people to do them with. Bicycle Tours A good way of visiting the agricultural communities and learning about villagers lives is by bicycle. There are various half and full day tours on offer. A popular half-day tour is the traditional livelihoods tour. This typically includes meeting the locals, making rice paper, dried bananas, rice wine and Khmer noodles, then taking you to the fish paste market (pungent!). Free Cycling Tour Run by university student Sam, who dreams of having a tourism business, he runs these tours at $5 bike hire and then tip what you like. It's also good to tip the villages as you go around for their time. He gets rave reviews for his personality, singing and going to different local villages than the other bigger tour companies. You are also likely to have a smaller number in your group. Email: freecyclingtour@gmail.com Tel: +855 93961526 Website: http://freecyclingtour.com/ Butterfly Tours The guides are university students helping fund their education. Departures daily at 7:30am and 1:40pm, 4 hours, US$18 (+US$5 mountain bike) including tuk-tuk pick-up and drop-off. Email: butterflytour.btb@gmail.com Tel: +855 89 297070 Address: Street 1.5, Battambang 0203 Website: http://www.butterflytour.asia/day-tours.html Soksabike Departures daily at 7:30am, duration 4.5 hours, US$27 (includes mountain bike and price decreases depending on the number in the group). Includes compensation to family business visited, tuk-tuk pick-up and drop-off. Email: info@soksabike.com Tel: +855 12542019 Address: Kinyei Cafe, St 1.5, Near Psar Nath (central market), Battambang Website: http://www.soksabike.com/ Tuk-Tuk Tours With a full day tuk-tuk tour, you can take in most of the sights and experiences the area has to offer. Tuk-tuk drivers will tailor to requests, but a typical half day culture tour would include; a trip to the 11th century temple of Wat Ek Phnom; then on to see meet the locals making rice paper, Khmer scarfs, dried bananas and bamboo sticky rice; finally heading to the killing fields to learn about their dark history. An afternoon tour option looks something like; experience the exhilarating Bamboo Train (+US$5pp); visit Wat Sampeau (+US$3pp if you want a moto up), Killing Cave and the mesmerising bat cave at dusk. A full day would be a combination of the two and include a local lunch. There are plenty of tuk-tuk drivers with good English and knowledge around Battambang. Some will stop as they drive by to offer you tours, good if you haven't arranged anything in advance. If you are interested, chat to them for a bit and use your judgement as to whether you think they are friendly and knowledgeable. Not all good tuk-tuk guides have a website or are on TripAdvisor. That said here are some great tried and tested options (all include pick-up and drop-off): Savet Tuk-Tuk Tour Savet is an ex-teacher turned friendly knowledgeable tuk-tuk tour guide. The full day tour is US$24, half day US$16. Email: battambang.countryside.trip@gmail.com Tel: +855 77854044 Website: https://battambangtrip.wordpress.com/ Bun Tours Bun the tuk-tuk tour guide gets rave reviews also. Check out his website or contact him for further info. Email: buntours@gmail.com Tel: +855 78646162 Website: https://battambangtours.wordpress.com/ Kim Tours Good English, funny and positive reviews for Kim and his brother Nani. Email: kimtours.battambang@gmail.com Tel: +855 12654427 Website: http://www.kimtours.info/tours