12. 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 More7. Angkor Wat
The cycle to Ankor Wat from the border town of Poipet is all on the main road. I’m sure some cyclists can do it all in one day, but for us it’s a short hop to Sisophon of 45km and then a monster 100km to Siem Reap. It’s all flat, always into the wind, just like we’ve been since we left Bangkok and is relatively ok until the heat builds up, then it becomes seriously uncomfortable and, for us, difficult. So the plan for the 100km was to leave at 4am, 2 and half hours before sun rise! We had decided we needed to get up early in Poipet so we would be tired when we arrived...
Read More6. Papers Please!
The cycle too the border from Bangkok took a few days taking us though small villages and quiet roads and of course past many Temples.. It’s lovely cycling here when it’s not the middle of the day. Life starts about 4.30am. It’s the cool time of day and people take advantage of that to socialise with friends in groups walking, running and even cycling. Drive through breakfast… It’s also the best time to get up and get going for us so we slowly moved through the Thai countryside towards the border starting at dawn and watching the countryside change as the sun...
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