We finally left PP even with Tabs' still feeling crook and after another late night drinkin... made for a fun days ride!
Soon out of the city and into countryside, without the stone markers telling us how far we had gone the ride went suprisingly
fast! Got to Skun around 1pm, found a guesthouse and crashed. Tabs went to sleep and I checked out the market, nice local
affair and got some fried bananas to eat whilst we watched movies the rest of the day! We both fell asleep ridiculously
early, not even eating dinner!
Another early start the following day, to the market for our rice porridge fix and on the road before it got too hot...
passing small villages and the shouts of 'hello!' from folks as we cycle by. Stopped at a bigger town for lunch and a girl
from a stall came to speak with us. Its amazing how many people in Cambodia speak English, in such a remote area where no
tourists would come, its nice for us to be able to talk to local people more but means we don't practice our Cambodian!
Struggled on another 35km in the hot hot sun to get to quite a big town, Kampong Thom. Found a rather flash place to
stay and off to check out - yes - the market! Ate dinner at a nice little restarant which had just opened, and on the
way back passed a weird karaoke/fun fair type event in the middle of the national highway... everyone was lovin it.
Mentally prepared ourselves for a 90km stretch the next day, with Tabs still recovering from her funny tummy. It was long
and the road is straight and flat so at times it does get (dare I say it) dull... but always
things to see like the fully loaded pick-ups transporting people from town to village, along with livestock,
motorbikes and who knows what piled up on top. Crazy.
Arrived at Kampong Kdai exhausted but happy, ate at our guesthouse and met 2 cycle tourers from Belgium at the start of
their trip, nice to talk to and swap stories. The next day we played leap frog with 2 other French riders. With only
5 main roads the chances of meeting other cyclists are high but its a popular place to come.Siem Reap
The ride into Siem Reap was shorter compared to the previous days. Most memorable thing for me was literally getting ants in me pants after a behind the bushes pee.. jumped around hysterically providing amusement for passers by. Great. Rocked into busy dusty Siem Reap early, found a simple room to stay and took it easy the rest of the day. Down to check out the market and shopping area, funny place with swanky bars and restaurants next to simple street food and very poor Cambodians trying to make any bit of cash they can.
We rested up the next day too and spent some time on the net, writing journals etc nice to recuperate. Then in the
afternoon off to the temples to cash in on our 'free sunset' deal. Basically if you buy a day pass you can enter
the night before to see the, you guessed it, sunset. So in we cycled for our first glimpses of Angkor. Amazing...
people were everywhere but the towers looked majestic and the place is huge. Sprinted down to the prime sunset
viewing temple, climbed the hill with a right gaggle of people from all over the world, found a perch and waited
for the sun to go down. Also randomly bumped into a guy we met in Sihanoukville. Its a small place. It was lovely
and red and took photos with every other tourist and their camera. Job done and back down the hill and to have an
early night.
Up at the insanely early, even for us, time of 4.45am in order to this time catch the sunrise. Gotta get our moneys
worth aye. A kid selling coffee lead us to a good spot near the lotus pond to see the sun come up over
Ankgor Wat. So
watched it slowly get light whilst supping coffee, again part of a big crowd but can't expect to have the place to
yourself. Then we check out the temple complex itself, pretty darn impressive and took a million photos. From there
we cycled round checking out another half dozen different temples, big and small, some really busy others nice and
peaceful. It was really hot and exhausting work, both tired and packed in a lot but hey - we were exploring amazing,
1,000 year old-ish buildings from a powerful ancient empire that have lasted pretty well to survive till today.I hadn't realised there would be villages, schools, communities etc all around the area and as such there were also many people (especially children) trying to sell us things, this made for tiring work yet it's sad people are just trying to survive on the doorstep of their national treasure.
The following day was very dull by comparison, more chores to take care of including getting a spare tyre to replace our slowly dying ones, and trying to do a make-shift repair job on my rack which was rapidly falling apart. We just hoped we could make it to Bangkok!
Set off mentally prepared for a tough ride. We had been told countless times that the 150km stretch of road between
Siem Reap and the border was a killer. Its been indefinitely under construction thanks to dodgy deals with an airline
company and the government to keep people flying between Bangkok and the temples. Perfect. Even still nothing really
prepared us for how bad the road actually was. It was gravel sometimes, packed earth in other spots, full of diversions
and utterly dusty. Every time a big veicle went past we were shrouded in a dust cloud and soon had a fine layer covering
us, and our stuff. That all said we were complete troopers, put our heads down and didn't moan once. One crazy
thing we saw was a guy walking along collecting recycling that we had seen first 2 days before Siem
Reap... he must just walk all day everyday. During lunch we chatted to a nice guy with good English. He had been to
Siem Reap 50km away once two years ago and had never been in the other direction. He asked where we had gone in Cambodia
and all about the rest of his country. Very humbling.
Made it to Sisophon with time to spare rather chuffed with ourselves. Tabs went to ask a moto driver where to find a guest
house, he showed us a place and by the end we had agreed to meet him the next day to go out to see a remote temple we had
heard good things about. The next morning we clambered on the back of his motorbike and set off up yet another bumpy dusty
road to see Banteay Chhmar. He spoke good English and on the way chatted about the differences between our respective
countries (ie. a lot!). Unlike Angkor we had the whole place to ourselves and a local guide showed us round. It was mostly
rubble after being forgotten about and then attacked by the Khmer Rouge and looters from Thailand but still had some
beautiful sculptures and it was fun boulder hopping around the place! We also checked out two smaller temples close
by before having lunch and heading back to town. Our last night in Cambodia was spent eating at a strangely quiet
funfair where everyone was just watching a telly in the park, and then having a beer at a cheesy karaoke bar.
It was another bumpy dusty ride the next day but not for as long, soon we were coming up to the giant casino's marking
the border with Thailand. We were keen to race through and get to the town on the Thai side in order to catch a train..
managed with plenty of time in the end and all too soon we were out of poor, rundown Cambodia and stepping off in uber
urban Bangkok.