Phnom Penh to Battambang railway in October 1992


Downtown Phnom Penh in October 1992

by Mark
Sep 20, 2014

Alternatively, you could ride in the first carriage for free. This carriage was pushed rather than pulled by the engine train and was used to detect mines on the track

I first visited Cambodia in October 1992. Back then it was relatively easy to get a visa (courtesy of Bangkok’s Khao San Road travel agents) but options for entering the country were limited to just two. You either flew into Phnom Penh on an old Russian Tupolev from Bangkok or you travelled to the island of Koh Chang in south-east Thailand and paid a fisherman to drop you off on the south-west of the country. The second option was illegal and although I considered myself reasonably adventurous at the time having crossed China overland and walked practically the whole length of northern Pakistan because of horrendous flooding and landslides that occurred that year, I didn’t see the point in making life too difficult for myself so I opted for the flight

It was my first time on a Tupolev and I had no idea that the white smoke filling the cabin was actually water vapour created by the air-conditioning system. This was not good and I nearly got off the plane there and then, unaware this was normal procedure. Apart from that, the flight was uneventful and I landed in Phnom Penh about an hour later. The airport was dated but extremely busy with military personnel due to the presence of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

Even though the train option was overall much longer, we decided it would be more comfortable as at least you could get up and move around every now and then. We got to the station at 5am and already the train was crammed with people and their possessions. The fare was US$1 all the way to Battambang. Alternatively, you could ride in the first carriage for free. This carriage was pushed rather than pulled by the engine train and was used to detect mines on the track – sadly it was completely full. Surprisingly we pulled out of the station on time at 6am and eventually we arrived into Battambang at 10pm that night, 16 hours later.

The train should have taken 12 hours – two of our numerous delays that stick with me were 1) a guy falling off the roof of the train and having to be fixed up before we could get going again and 2) a huge explosion in a nearby field. It was dark by this point and we had armed guards stationed at the end of each carriage. Their job was to protect the train against attack from the still active Khmer Rouge (another criticism of the UNTAC operation is that it failed in its goal of disarming the Khmer Rouge) and when a large explosion went off very close to our carriage the guards started firing into the night.

Full. https://www.kathmanduandbeyond.com/back ... early-90s/

my first trip was in ' 88, traveled overland from Bo Rai to Palin by foot,
had a few KR to escort us in around the mine fields

Never got to see any more of the country till 2002

Kung-fu Hillbilly wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:30 am
Phnom Penh to Battambang railway in October 1992

Is this the train those three guys (Australian David Wilson, Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet, and Briton oMark Slater) got kidnapped from and executed by the KR in 1994?

"Alternatively, you could ride in the first carriage for free. This carriage was pushed rather than pulled by the engine train and was used to detect mines on the track"

Is that why is was pushed, and the first carriage was free?

My recollection of the train in 1992 and somewhat after is that the first three box cars were full of ballast in order to be "sacrificed" in the event of the track being "mined". In theory, these ballast wagons were supposed to be passenger free but if you were game to ride on them you were welcome to do so and no one was going to stop you.

Armed parties from several of the waring factions were still to be seen well in to 1992. It was not that UNTAC "failed" to disarm the several waring parties that had agreed to be disarmed at the Paris Peace Accords of 1991. The disarming and containerization of weapons from the various factions started smoothly enough, but very early in the process the KR changed their minds and refused to turn in any more weapons. Not unreasonably, from the perspective of the other factions, they had no wish to become disarmed and vulnerable so they, too, refused to turn in any more arms. This completely changed the nature of UNTAC's mission. UNTAC had no mandate to use force of arms to compel the disarmament and return to "hot" warlike actions. Nor was it equipped with the heavy armaments to do so had it become necessary to fight such operations. The UNTAC military components were in country for Peace Keeping, not Peace Making, and for self-defense if necessary. The nations voluntarily contributing both civil and military components to UNTAC found the prospect of body bags returning home politically unacceptable.

OML - UNTAC 1992

This post is loaded with potential and I'm anticipating that I will be reading more 1st or 2nd hand accounts of train travel and/or backpacking Cambodia in the early 90's. @phuketrichard I am not considering you went past Pailin in 1988. Either way do tell us more please.

bossho wrote: ↑Mon May 30, 2022 5:48 am This post is loaded with potential and I'm anticipating that I will be reading more 1st or 2nd hand accounts of train travel and/or backpacking Cambodia in the early 90's. @phuketrichard I am not considering you went past Pailin in 1988. Either way do tell us more please.

We went in , usually 6 or 7 thai's and me or my partner. Spent 5-8 days camping south of Pailin, digging and sorting the gems than back out.
KR took 50 % of our take, but still it was well worth it as our open pit mines were only yielding small 1-2 c stones. Never even thought about travelling further.

My house in Bo Rai was located about 1 kms to Cambodia and the roads around there were often used by the KR to transport troops.

Awesome!! Is that all...!!??

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Mon May 30, 2022 6:56 am

bossho wrote: ↑Mon May 30, 2022 5:48 am This post is loaded with potential and I'm anticipating that I will be reading more 1st or 2nd hand accounts of train travel and/or backpacking Cambodia in the early 90's. @phuketrichard I am not considering you went past Pailin in 1988. Either way do tell us more please.

We went in , usually 6 or 7 thai's and me or my partner. Spent 5-8 days camping south of Pailin, digging and sorting the gems than back out.
KR took 50 % of our take, but still it was well worth it as our open pit mines were only yielding small 1-2 c stones. Never even thought about travelling further.

My house in Bo Rai was located about 1 kms to Cambodia and the roads around there were often used by the KR to transport troops.

Pailin, well known for sapphire and ruby, and I may add well sort after. I remember being in Chanthaburi about 20 years ago, the gem market was open for business as usual. It's a crowded, hot and hectic place to be with many people of mixed nationalities' trading and selling stones of all quality, size and quantities. It was somewhere to experience the trading of gemstones, but not a place for me to buy, with having limited knowledge of the gem's quality and price, it was a place where foreign buyers would have paid experts to hand for the pricing, quality and buying, although I found alternatively the gemstone area of Bangkok was a safer place to buy for myself.
I saw my first Pailin sapphire's, many in their uncut raw state, small stones like Richard had mentioned, I had also seen the well sort after royal blue sapphire that can demand a good price when cut. There was an abundance of other stones from Pailin and other areas of Cambodia, Rubies and Peridot, not to forget my favorable Cambodian gemstone, Zircon, mainly mined in the Ratanakiri region.