13. Costa del Thailand
From Chanthaburi we headed back to he coast on a cycle lane! There’s been quite a lot of these recently, though very very few cycles and they’re usually used by the mopeds and motorbikes to pootle along in. A proper protected cycle lane Once we reached the coast though the cycle path was a segregated cycle only lane, with a separate footpath and a moped lane. It had signs every few meters saying bikes only no parking and as cars the world over do, it was totally ignored unless it was physically impossible to get on to it to park due to a big curb. I have no idea if this is true,...
Read More12. Road? What road?
We reluctantly left our Christmas oasis of luxury in Phnom Penh after a lovely seven nights rest. Our journey from here takes us back westward to the coast. Once we reach the coast we only have one road option and that’s the main road and it goes up and down a lot. You know what we think of ups and downs, but far worse than this is that the road is being ‘resurfaced’. What the Cambodians mean by this is its actually being laid. The old road is what an estate agent would describe as ‘Laid to pot holes’, though this is stretching the term pot...
Read More11. Phonm Penh
The ferry into PP is an experience on its own. There are about 15 ferry’s, 2 of which are roro and the others are drive on reverse off ferries. No probs for a tandem or the millions of mopeds but there’s a single concrete ramp leading down into the water at each port and the ferries push and shove to dock right next to each other anywhere they can on this ramp. Cars and moped then fight to get past the other cars and mopeds trying to board outgoing ferries and men wave batons and blow whistles to try to control it all. It’s great fun to watch and we walked Tilly off...
Read More10. On a mission
The border crossing back to Cambodia was quicker than on the way in and the road back to Stung Treng was quiet apart from when we stopped for lunch just as the 122 Ford ‘IveGotATinyWily’ Ranger Wildtrack Frontier Pansy 4×4’s came past in a convoy with rally stickers on. They had to follow a police car which was doing all of 40kph which I’m pretty sure will have pissed off the convoy on this long straight empty road. The highlight of the ride for us though was bumping into a French family cycling toward Laos, 2 children – one on his own bike aged 9...
Read More9. Cycling for pleasure
The next leg of the trip was through a remote agricultural landscape with only 1 town and few villages or places to eat and almost no shade. The one potential stop was a fleapit mentioned earlier and we didn’t know if we could manage a hilly 140km cycle to miss it. The lack of shade and of course being into the wind wasn’t appealing. So after a long discussion (who are we kidding!) we decided we didn’t want to cycle just for the sake of cycling. And we also fancied being in Phnom Penh for Christmas for a nut roast – I kid you not! So, we hired a car and driver to skip...
Read More8. Angkors away
After a great week at Siem Reap, and having stocked up for the next few weeks with western essentials (cheddar!) at the local western supermarket that stocked virtually anything you could get in England, we moved on! We’ve been a bit apprehensive about the next leg of the journey. Originally we had planned to head to the capital Phnom Penh and then south to the coast, then we saw the hills and the main road we’d have to do with long moutainous rides and thought again! So we’re now heading north temple hopping with a bag full of comfort food supplies. Despite me...
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