I was angry. Very angry. So I did the only thing I know how to do. I put on my helmet and went for a long ride.
Riding by yourself is great, you don't have to worry about anyone else. There is no compromise, no different opinions, no arguments. You just go.
But locked inside a helmet with only your own thoughts can be a dangerous thing.
I didn't stop for anything or anyone. Very soon I was out of Siem Reap and had the space to digest everything. I started thinking about all the people I met, I thought about the hotel owner who cheated me. I wondered if I could have done anything differently. I thought about how much I hated Cambodia. Very soon I was comparing this trip to the first one. At this point in the first trip I was somewhere in central Asia. Every time I stopped there I was surrounded by people who wanted nothing but time, who so desperately wanted to talk and we would have to invent some way of communicating. They would all fall over themselves to say welcome or offer drinks, food, or accommodation. In the week I spent in Cambodia so far I had been surrounded only by people falling over themselves to empty my wallet, people who knew nothing but lies and deception.
I mean, what's the point of coming here if the people show no respect? I want to know them but they don't want to know me.
I happened to be on the road heading back in to Thailand. Maybe I should just leave Cambodia now. Screw the rest, if it's anything like Siem Reap I don't want anything to do with it. I know, I'll go back to Bangkok, find a shipping company and send the bike over to Istanbul, go for another ride around the Stans. The central Asian winter may be brutal but it's preferable to this place.
But then this happened.
This is so stupid, I can't believe I'm actually going to write this. But stupid as it is it was a pivotal moment for my time in Cambodia.
I stopped for a drink and saw this road heading off with the sign warning about cows. That cow spent ages just hanging around next to the sign, like it knew that was the right place to be. But just as the guy on the bike turned up the cow decided that was a good time to try and cross the road forcing biker dude to swerve around it. He should have paid more attention to the sign.
See, I told you it was stupid. It's nothing, not even close to funny but for some reason it really entertained me. Biker dude got to the top of the road and looked over to me, flashed an impossibly large Cambodian smile and took off.
Suddenly I was in a good mood again.
A short distance down the road I found 3 lads piled onto a moped. We spent a while waving and overtaking each other.
I like Cambodia. And all it took was a couple of mopeds and a barnyard animal.
I got off the road back to Thailand and started heading south further in to Cambodia. Immediately I came across a sign that I had seen before but a very long time ago.
I first saw this sign somewhere in western Turkey. It stands for Asian Highway 1, a huge 20,000km long road network crossing the whole of Asia starting on the border between Turkey and Bulgaria and ending in Tokyo. I had been to both ends of it and had now found it again somewhere in the middle. Suddenly both the Don't Go Right's came together.
I spent that night in a town called Battambang. It was meant to be a really touristy city but it really didn't feel like it. In fact, I didn't see any tourists anywhere.
I found a hotel and through the medium of interpretive dance managed to procure a room for the night. Across the road was a market so after unloading the bike I scurried off in search of food. I bought some delicious stir fry type thing from a guy who was so passionate about it that he actually made me believe that stir fry was the most important thing in the world. Fairly pleased with myself I found a mango smoothie from a different stall and went back to eat outside the hotel, spending a few hours sat with some random guys as we all grunted at each other.
How fantastic is this? People are friendly, nobody speaks English, I feel completely out of place and yet completely at home. I love Cambodia.
Somebody Else: But you said you hated it.
M: I did? Not sure about that.
SE: Yeah you were going to leave. And what about all that stuff in Siem Reap?
M: Siem what? Oh, you mean that place? With the thing? Yeah, don't care about that.
In the morning I found a café down the road and ordered possibly the best omelette I've ever had. There was another white guy, heavily tattooed, sat in the there. I acknowledged him as I arrived but he quickly looked away. Bit rude.
After a few minutes an old, fat white guy turned up with a very young Cambodian kid in tow. He seems to know tattooed guy and tried to make small talk but tattooed guy isn't having any of it. He just sinks further in to his seat and doesn't really respond. Neither one of them wants anything to do with me. The kid has run off and it slowing ripping apart the café so fat dude goes over to control him. Tattooed guy uses the opportunity to slip away but he then returns a few minutes later with a dog. Oddly intrigued, I can't help but watch. Fat guy once again makes small talk while the child screams his head off and starts threatening the structural integrity of the entire building. Eventually a young Cambodian woman turns up, shouts something at fat guy and immediately manages to calm the child down.
Actually, looking at that kid again.....well, he's.....I mean, he's not......
Oh, right. I get it. My brain hasn't turned on yet.
I paid the bill and left.
Plan for the day. You know I said that Cambodia was really flat? Well, it mostly is. But on the map I noticed some mountains to the south that I thought I should take on. On the other side was a town called Koh Kong on the coast which was meant to be quite nice. It was about 200km away, even though it would be mostly off road it should be easy enough with an early start.
Well, I wasn't exactly an early start, more like 11am. Then I got lost. See, my satnav didn't really know about the roads I needed to take so I had to get a load of way point from the interwebs somewhere and upload them. But with way points 3km apart and no road signs it's fairly easy to get lost.
But eventually I found the right road, and it turned out to be in great condition.
Eventually I came across this little town in the middle of nowhere. Out here most people are farmers so this was the biggest thing for miles. It was just a couple of buildings spread along either side of the road, a couple of different shops, a basic pharmacy, a café. I stopped to buy some drinks and the guy in the shop wouldn't stop smiling.
Eventually I started seeing the mountains in the distance. They were apparently called the Elephant Mountains, I started getting optimistic about finding wild elephants again.
But then I was told to get off the nice road. That one was heading away back towards the Thai border, I needed to go south. Then things got quite significantly worse.
The mud was thick and deep. I got stuck quite a lot along here. In about an hour I managed to cover a whole 2.5 km.
Then this one happened.
This one was bad. If I knew what I know now I would have just opened it up and run straight into the water. But at the time I thought it would be better to skirt around the edge. Mistake.
This one was so bad I couldn't get out by myself. Fortunately there were other people around, but it took 6 of us 10 minutes to drag the heavy Tranny out of there.
Once it was out I turned around to thank them but they had vanished.
Then there was a massive clap of thunder.
Trouble.
I had a bit of a panic attack here. It's funny looking back on it, particularly with what Laos has been like. It was 3pm now and I still had 180ish km to go to Koh Kong. There was no way I was going to do that. So I turned around.
Slightly embarrassing but Cambodia managed to beat me almost instantly.
There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to riding in mud. The first is slow and steady, feet down, prioritise not falling off above everything else. That's the one that I do.
The second school is "Don't be a pansy, open it up and hope for the best." When I turned around I suddendly switched and joined the second school. And you know what? It worked. That 2.5km that took an hour the first time only took about 10 mins on the way back. I didn't get stuck, didn't crash, didn't anything bad. Just got very dirty. I thought I had my helmet camera running for all of that but afterwards realised I forgot to press go. No way I'm going back to do it again.
Looking at the map later on I saw that further on along that road it was marked impassable in the wet season. So turning around was the right call.
Back at the junction with the good road it started chucking it down. There was a small café thing there that was actually just someone’s house so I ran in there and had a drink with them. Everyone in the area had noticed me ride past earlier and now watched me turned around and cowering from the rain much to their amusement.
I took a different route back to the main tarmac road which goes towards Phnom Penh. It turned into a motocross track
It took forever but just as the sun set I made it back to the main road. Very soon I found a guest house that was far too expensive for what it was but exhausted I was just glad for a shower and somewhere to sleep.
There was a restaurant down the road so I went for dinner. This is a town that I'm sure sees countless buses of tourists pass through every day who never stop. Communicating was exactly as difficult as you would imagine. After much raucous piss taking by everyone else in there I eventually ended up with something to eat that looked suspiciously like the testicles of something. It was pretty good.
The next morning I woke up in a good mood. The only thing ahead of me was Phnom Penh, there was no avoiding it even if I wanted to. It's the capital of Cambodia, got to be worth a look.
Of course, once again it is the wet season out here. It doesn't rain all the time, but when it does it is extremely heavy. You can count on 2 or 3 half hour downpours per day. Usually they come in the afternoon but that day I was caught out very early. Thankfully there are shops and cafes all along the roads in this part of the world which can be used for shelter. I would pull up in a hurry, grab the non-waterproof stuff off the bike, buy a bottle of something and wait it out. The adults usually can't speak English and much to my shame I never learnt a single word of Cambodian, but quite often a teenager will appear out of nowhere to practice their English.
Getting closer to Phnom Penh the building seemed to become a noticeable higher quality - more money - but for some reason the roads got worse.
And rather unimaginatively named
I found a hotel in the middle of the city and checked in for a few nights.
The Grand Palace is by far and away the thing to see in Phnom Penh.
Then I stumbled across the museum just around the corner. When Angkor was being restored lots of the statues that were found were brought here. Today there are no ornaments left in the ruins and you have to just imagine what it would have originally been like based on the stonework and reliefs on the buildings. But finding all the statues here suddenly brought the ruins into a new light and it became a lot easier to imagine just how impressive the city would have been in its day.
Along the waterfront in Phnom Penh is quite nice, it's where all the tourists and expat seem to hang out. Apparently it was redeveloped several years ago by the Japanese.
But you don't have to walk very far away before they stop maintaining the parks and rubbish lines the streets.
Wandering round the back streets I stumbled upon the most wonderful sight.
Cambodian Transalp. The old one, the original 600cc version. And in a lot better condition than mine. I was quite jealous.
Actually the wealth disparity in Phnom Penh is terribly obvious. I mean, there were people doing their washing in the river right next to the palace, and then driving along the street is this.
A hummer is a douchebaggy car in any country, but here it's just outstandingly offensive.
To be perfectly frank Phnom Penh is not a particularly great city by South East Asian standards. The palace and museum are the only things I found that were really worth visiting.
Except for this next thing.
I've already mentioned a little bit about Cambodian history and how they have had a very difficult several decades. Under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge they experienced one of the worst genocides history has ever seen with 1/4 of the countries population murdered. Killing fields litter the entire country but the one just outside Phnom Penh is the biggest. Something like 5,000 peope were murdered here.
Today it is a museum and memorial to those who died. The centre of it is a huge building filled with bones exhumed from the mass graves. The site is beautifully maintained, the stories there are heartbreaking but it is never self pitying. There is a positive message and call to action for everyone, if only we could be arsed to listen.
I think if there is one place that every visitor to Cambodia should go to then this would be it, it's far more important than Angkor.
A few members of the Pol Pot regime are still alive and are undergoing trial. Their pictures and stories are displayed in the museum. Cambodians make their feelings abundantly clear.
Ok, on to happier things.
The next day I packed up and left Phnom Penh. I thought about heading down to the coast but after reading a bit about the towns there decided not to bother. Instead I picked up the Mekong river and started following it north.
Just like in Thailand glittering temples are everywhere, usually much better constructed than any other building in the vicinity.
I was surprised by the amount of tarmac I found here, I was really expecting to have a lot more dirt roads to contend with. As it happened I made great progress and ended up in a town on the banks of the Mekong called Kratie.
There was some festival going on that night which was a nice surprise. So far as I can tell it involved everyone piling down to the waterfront and doing their best to blow their own hands off with fireworks.
In Cambodia road works are fairly common. When they happen this is all the traffic management that is required.
A bit of tree thrown on to the road. Lets you know something bad is coming up.
The road I was on was heading up towards Laos. But I was having such a good time in Cambodia I didn't particularly want to leave. So I decided to head east towards so mountains and the town of San Monorom.
No idea what this thing is all about. It was literally in the middle of nowhere.
And wow, this was such a good move. It was a complete spur of the moment thing, unplanned and unknown. I had no idea what to expect over there but this would have been the last thing on the list. Suddenly it was like I was no longer in a tropical country. I climbed up to an elevation of about 700 metres that night, the landscape completely changed. The air was much cooler and low humidity. The trees were different, the crops were different, even the buildings. I honestly was not expecting Cambodia to change like this, especially given the first couple days of riding when it was so flat and similar.
That night I ended up staying in a tree house. Well, they called it a tree house but it was actually just a house next to a tree. But it had a hammock and hammocks make all things good.
Probably my biggest regret from Cambodia was that I didn't stay here longer. I was enjoying the riding so much that I carried on the next day, I really wish I had taken a day or two off to explore the area more.
But now I had a bit of a problem. I couldn't go further east or south - that would lead to Vietnam which is a no go for the bike. I could go west but that was were I came from the day before and I didn't really want to double back if I could help it.
That just left north. The trouble with going north there is only one road leading out of the mountains up to a town called Ban Lung. It just so happened that I had heard of this road before. I read a report from a guy who rode it a few years ago. He dubbed it 'The Road of Death'.
Slightly pessimistic. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
I spent so long examining this muddy slope. It's a lot steeper than the pictures make it look and the mud was very wet. It occurred only about 10km out of town so turning around and getting back to the tarmac was definitely an option, but I didn't want to turn around. Cambodia had beaten me once already, it wasn't going to do it again.
Eventually a couple of locals on bikes turned up. They all seemed to negotiate the muddle slope of doom without any trouble but I was still worried. I got talking to one guy in very broken English. He seemed to think that after this hill there was one more muddy section and then it was a good road all the way to Ban Lung, 200km away.
Ok, screw it. I'm going to do it.
It was fine. The workman at the bottom of the hill were very entertained by my clumsiness but after handshakes and smiles they confirmed that the road ahead was mostly good. I was still nervous though. You see, if you ask someone here "Do you know where x is?" the answer is yes. Especially if they actually don't know where it is. It is better to give a wrong answer of yes than admit you don't know.
I spent the entire day asking every single person I came across (including one bloke called KALIMAAAAAA - Cambodians have the best names) what the road ahead was like. Invariably the answer was always 'perfect'. It turned out there was more than just 1 more difficult section but in fairness the road was amazing.
At one point I found a bike with this for the back wheel. The girl who owned it was extremely enthusiastic and claimed that she could ride up sheer cliffs with it. Not entirely sure I believe that but I would have loved to see her try.
I made it to Ban Lung exhausted just as the sun was going down and found a hotel with some of the worst bedding but the best use of a toothbrush I have ever seen.
The guy in the hotel was called Kaka and was almost completely fluent in English. He claimed that he taught himself just by working in tourist restaurants and hotels and that when he started that work 2 years ago he didn't know a single word. If that's true I am beyond jealous. But we had a great evening talking about anything.
I was less that a days ride from the Laotian border now so this was my last night in Cambodia. And I couldn't have asked for a better ending. The first 5 days I spent in Siem Reap were among the worst I've had while travelling. I stand by everything I said about that place. But the other places more than make up for it. Especially the tiny little villages on dirt roads, hundreds of kms away from the nearest city. That's where the people I had hoped to meet were. They were friendly, enthusiastic, they wanted to know about me and the bike. They were proud of their homes, shops, family, they wanted to show everything off. There is this look of shock they adopt when the fat, beardy, inappropriately dressed white guy who barely knows how to walk let along ride a bike turns up and does some strange dance that later turns out to mean "Can I buy a bottle of water please?"
I am so happy that Cambodia ended this way. If my experience was limited to Siem Reap and Phnom Penh like most tourists seem to then I would have come away completely disillusioned with the entire country. But now I actually have good memories. I sort of wish that other people would avoid Siem Reap and go to the places I went to, but secretly I don't. I know that what I'm doing is not particularly unusual, but I'm terrified that if it becomes too common then the charm of Cambodia will be lost for good.
Riding by yourself is great, you don't have to worry about anyone else. There is no compromise, no different opinions, no arguments. You just go.
But locked inside a helmet with only your own thoughts can be a dangerous thing.
I didn't stop for anything or anyone. Very soon I was out of Siem Reap and had the space to digest everything. I started thinking about all the people I met, I thought about the hotel owner who cheated me. I wondered if I could have done anything differently. I thought about how much I hated Cambodia. Very soon I was comparing this trip to the first one. At this point in the first trip I was somewhere in central Asia. Every time I stopped there I was surrounded by people who wanted nothing but time, who so desperately wanted to talk and we would have to invent some way of communicating. They would all fall over themselves to say welcome or offer drinks, food, or accommodation. In the week I spent in Cambodia so far I had been surrounded only by people falling over themselves to empty my wallet, people who knew nothing but lies and deception.
I mean, what's the point of coming here if the people show no respect? I want to know them but they don't want to know me.
I happened to be on the road heading back in to Thailand. Maybe I should just leave Cambodia now. Screw the rest, if it's anything like Siem Reap I don't want anything to do with it. I know, I'll go back to Bangkok, find a shipping company and send the bike over to Istanbul, go for another ride around the Stans. The central Asian winter may be brutal but it's preferable to this place.
But then this happened.
This is so stupid, I can't believe I'm actually going to write this. But stupid as it is it was a pivotal moment for my time in Cambodia.
I stopped for a drink and saw this road heading off with the sign warning about cows. That cow spent ages just hanging around next to the sign, like it knew that was the right place to be. But just as the guy on the bike turned up the cow decided that was a good time to try and cross the road forcing biker dude to swerve around it. He should have paid more attention to the sign.
See, I told you it was stupid. It's nothing, not even close to funny but for some reason it really entertained me. Biker dude got to the top of the road and looked over to me, flashed an impossibly large Cambodian smile and took off.
Suddenly I was in a good mood again.
A short distance down the road I found 3 lads piled onto a moped. We spent a while waving and overtaking each other.
I like Cambodia. And all it took was a couple of mopeds and a barnyard animal.
I got off the road back to Thailand and started heading south further in to Cambodia. Immediately I came across a sign that I had seen before but a very long time ago.
I first saw this sign somewhere in western Turkey. It stands for Asian Highway 1, a huge 20,000km long road network crossing the whole of Asia starting on the border between Turkey and Bulgaria and ending in Tokyo. I had been to both ends of it and had now found it again somewhere in the middle. Suddenly both the Don't Go Right's came together.
I spent that night in a town called Battambang. It was meant to be a really touristy city but it really didn't feel like it. In fact, I didn't see any tourists anywhere.
I found a hotel and through the medium of interpretive dance managed to procure a room for the night. Across the road was a market so after unloading the bike I scurried off in search of food. I bought some delicious stir fry type thing from a guy who was so passionate about it that he actually made me believe that stir fry was the most important thing in the world. Fairly pleased with myself I found a mango smoothie from a different stall and went back to eat outside the hotel, spending a few hours sat with some random guys as we all grunted at each other.
How fantastic is this? People are friendly, nobody speaks English, I feel completely out of place and yet completely at home. I love Cambodia.
Somebody Else: But you said you hated it.
M: I did? Not sure about that.
SE: Yeah you were going to leave. And what about all that stuff in Siem Reap?
M: Siem what? Oh, you mean that place? With the thing? Yeah, don't care about that.
In the morning I found a café down the road and ordered possibly the best omelette I've ever had. There was another white guy, heavily tattooed, sat in the there. I acknowledged him as I arrived but he quickly looked away. Bit rude.
After a few minutes an old, fat white guy turned up with a very young Cambodian kid in tow. He seems to know tattooed guy and tried to make small talk but tattooed guy isn't having any of it. He just sinks further in to his seat and doesn't really respond. Neither one of them wants anything to do with me. The kid has run off and it slowing ripping apart the café so fat dude goes over to control him. Tattooed guy uses the opportunity to slip away but he then returns a few minutes later with a dog. Oddly intrigued, I can't help but watch. Fat guy once again makes small talk while the child screams his head off and starts threatening the structural integrity of the entire building. Eventually a young Cambodian woman turns up, shouts something at fat guy and immediately manages to calm the child down.
Actually, looking at that kid again.....well, he's.....I mean, he's not......
Oh, right. I get it. My brain hasn't turned on yet.
I paid the bill and left.
Plan for the day. You know I said that Cambodia was really flat? Well, it mostly is. But on the map I noticed some mountains to the south that I thought I should take on. On the other side was a town called Koh Kong on the coast which was meant to be quite nice. It was about 200km away, even though it would be mostly off road it should be easy enough with an early start.
Well, I wasn't exactly an early start, more like 11am. Then I got lost. See, my satnav didn't really know about the roads I needed to take so I had to get a load of way point from the interwebs somewhere and upload them. But with way points 3km apart and no road signs it's fairly easy to get lost.
But eventually I found the right road, and it turned out to be in great condition.
Eventually I came across this little town in the middle of nowhere. Out here most people are farmers so this was the biggest thing for miles. It was just a couple of buildings spread along either side of the road, a couple of different shops, a basic pharmacy, a café. I stopped to buy some drinks and the guy in the shop wouldn't stop smiling.
Eventually I started seeing the mountains in the distance. They were apparently called the Elephant Mountains, I started getting optimistic about finding wild elephants again.
But then I was told to get off the nice road. That one was heading away back towards the Thai border, I needed to go south. Then things got quite significantly worse.
The mud was thick and deep. I got stuck quite a lot along here. In about an hour I managed to cover a whole 2.5 km.
Then this one happened.
 |
| Front wheel ended up in there |
This one was bad. If I knew what I know now I would have just opened it up and run straight into the water. But at the time I thought it would be better to skirt around the edge. Mistake.
This one was so bad I couldn't get out by myself. Fortunately there were other people around, but it took 6 of us 10 minutes to drag the heavy Tranny out of there.
Once it was out I turned around to thank them but they had vanished.
Then there was a massive clap of thunder.
Trouble.
I had a bit of a panic attack here. It's funny looking back on it, particularly with what Laos has been like. It was 3pm now and I still had 180ish km to go to Koh Kong. There was no way I was going to do that. So I turned around.
Slightly embarrassing but Cambodia managed to beat me almost instantly.
There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to riding in mud. The first is slow and steady, feet down, prioritise not falling off above everything else. That's the one that I do.
The second school is "Don't be a pansy, open it up and hope for the best." When I turned around I suddendly switched and joined the second school. And you know what? It worked. That 2.5km that took an hour the first time only took about 10 mins on the way back. I didn't get stuck, didn't crash, didn't anything bad. Just got very dirty. I thought I had my helmet camera running for all of that but afterwards realised I forgot to press go. No way I'm going back to do it again.
Looking at the map later on I saw that further on along that road it was marked impassable in the wet season. So turning around was the right call.
Back at the junction with the good road it started chucking it down. There was a small café thing there that was actually just someone’s house so I ran in there and had a drink with them. Everyone in the area had noticed me ride past earlier and now watched me turned around and cowering from the rain much to their amusement.
 |
| Can't escape this lot even all the way out here |
I took a different route back to the main tarmac road which goes towards Phnom Penh. It turned into a motocross track
It took forever but just as the sun set I made it back to the main road. Very soon I found a guest house that was far too expensive for what it was but exhausted I was just glad for a shower and somewhere to sleep.
There was a restaurant down the road so I went for dinner. This is a town that I'm sure sees countless buses of tourists pass through every day who never stop. Communicating was exactly as difficult as you would imagine. After much raucous piss taking by everyone else in there I eventually ended up with something to eat that looked suspiciously like the testicles of something. It was pretty good.
The next morning I woke up in a good mood. The only thing ahead of me was Phnom Penh, there was no avoiding it even if I wanted to. It's the capital of Cambodia, got to be worth a look.
Of course, once again it is the wet season out here. It doesn't rain all the time, but when it does it is extremely heavy. You can count on 2 or 3 half hour downpours per day. Usually they come in the afternoon but that day I was caught out very early. Thankfully there are shops and cafes all along the roads in this part of the world which can be used for shelter. I would pull up in a hurry, grab the non-waterproof stuff off the bike, buy a bottle of something and wait it out. The adults usually can't speak English and much to my shame I never learnt a single word of Cambodian, but quite often a teenager will appear out of nowhere to practice their English.
 |
| Found on one side of a bridge. Not sure this is in the right part of the world |
 |
| In the middle of a roundabout in some really tiny town |
Getting closer to Phnom Penh the building seemed to become a noticeable higher quality - more money - but for some reason the roads got worse.
And rather unimaginatively named
I found a hotel in the middle of the city and checked in for a few nights.
 |
| Lots of police hanging around the city centre in full riot gear. Nothing happened while I was there. |
The Grand Palace is by far and away the thing to see in Phnom Penh.
 |
| Model of Angkor Wat in its original splendour. |
Then I stumbled across the museum just around the corner. When Angkor was being restored lots of the statues that were found were brought here. Today there are no ornaments left in the ruins and you have to just imagine what it would have originally been like based on the stonework and reliefs on the buildings. But finding all the statues here suddenly brought the ruins into a new light and it became a lot easier to imagine just how impressive the city would have been in its day.
Along the waterfront in Phnom Penh is quite nice, it's where all the tourists and expat seem to hang out. Apparently it was redeveloped several years ago by the Japanese.
But you don't have to walk very far away before they stop maintaining the parks and rubbish lines the streets.
Wandering round the back streets I stumbled upon the most wonderful sight.
Cambodian Transalp. The old one, the original 600cc version. And in a lot better condition than mine. I was quite jealous.
Actually the wealth disparity in Phnom Penh is terribly obvious. I mean, there were people doing their washing in the river right next to the palace, and then driving along the street is this.
A hummer is a douchebaggy car in any country, but here it's just outstandingly offensive.
To be perfectly frank Phnom Penh is not a particularly great city by South East Asian standards. The palace and museum are the only things I found that were really worth visiting.
Except for this next thing.
I've already mentioned a little bit about Cambodian history and how they have had a very difficult several decades. Under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge they experienced one of the worst genocides history has ever seen with 1/4 of the countries population murdered. Killing fields litter the entire country but the one just outside Phnom Penh is the biggest. Something like 5,000 peope were murdered here.
Today it is a museum and memorial to those who died. The centre of it is a huge building filled with bones exhumed from the mass graves. The site is beautifully maintained, the stories there are heartbreaking but it is never self pitying. There is a positive message and call to action for everyone, if only we could be arsed to listen.
I think if there is one place that every visitor to Cambodia should go to then this would be it, it's far more important than Angkor.
A few members of the Pol Pot regime are still alive and are undergoing trial. Their pictures and stories are displayed in the museum. Cambodians make their feelings abundantly clear.
Ok, on to happier things.
The next day I packed up and left Phnom Penh. I thought about heading down to the coast but after reading a bit about the towns there decided not to bother. Instead I picked up the Mekong river and started following it north.
 |
| Don't know what this was, probably something to do with a wedding. |
 |
| Yet more rain coming |
 |
| Rice paddy spilling out onto the road |
There was some festival going on that night which was a nice surprise. So far as I can tell it involved everyone piling down to the waterfront and doing their best to blow their own hands off with fireworks.
 |
| The next morning, like nothing ever happened |
 |
| This is only half the Mekong. The land in the distance is an island |
In Cambodia road works are fairly common. When they happen this is all the traffic management that is required.
A bit of tree thrown on to the road. Lets you know something bad is coming up.
The road I was on was heading up towards Laos. But I was having such a good time in Cambodia I didn't particularly want to leave. So I decided to head east towards so mountains and the town of San Monorom.
No idea what this thing is all about. It was literally in the middle of nowhere.
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| But not going to Vietnam |
And wow, this was such a good move. It was a complete spur of the moment thing, unplanned and unknown. I had no idea what to expect over there but this would have been the last thing on the list. Suddenly it was like I was no longer in a tropical country. I climbed up to an elevation of about 700 metres that night, the landscape completely changed. The air was much cooler and low humidity. The trees were different, the crops were different, even the buildings. I honestly was not expecting Cambodia to change like this, especially given the first couple days of riding when it was so flat and similar.
That night I ended up staying in a tree house. Well, they called it a tree house but it was actually just a house next to a tree. But it had a hammock and hammocks make all things good.
Probably my biggest regret from Cambodia was that I didn't stay here longer. I was enjoying the riding so much that I carried on the next day, I really wish I had taken a day or two off to explore the area more.
But now I had a bit of a problem. I couldn't go further east or south - that would lead to Vietnam which is a no go for the bike. I could go west but that was were I came from the day before and I didn't really want to double back if I could help it.
That just left north. The trouble with going north there is only one road leading out of the mountains up to a town called Ban Lung. It just so happened that I had heard of this road before. I read a report from a guy who rode it a few years ago. He dubbed it 'The Road of Death'.
Slightly pessimistic. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
I spent so long examining this muddy slope. It's a lot steeper than the pictures make it look and the mud was very wet. It occurred only about 10km out of town so turning around and getting back to the tarmac was definitely an option, but I didn't want to turn around. Cambodia had beaten me once already, it wasn't going to do it again.
Eventually a couple of locals on bikes turned up. They all seemed to negotiate the muddle slope of doom without any trouble but I was still worried. I got talking to one guy in very broken English. He seemed to think that after this hill there was one more muddy section and then it was a good road all the way to Ban Lung, 200km away.
Ok, screw it. I'm going to do it.
It was fine. The workman at the bottom of the hill were very entertained by my clumsiness but after handshakes and smiles they confirmed that the road ahead was mostly good. I was still nervous though. You see, if you ask someone here "Do you know where x is?" the answer is yes. Especially if they actually don't know where it is. It is better to give a wrong answer of yes than admit you don't know.
I spent the entire day asking every single person I came across (including one bloke called KALIMAAAAAA - Cambodians have the best names) what the road ahead was like. Invariably the answer was always 'perfect'. It turned out there was more than just 1 more difficult section but in fairness the road was amazing.
At one point I found a bike with this for the back wheel. The girl who owned it was extremely enthusiastic and claimed that she could ride up sheer cliffs with it. Not entirely sure I believe that but I would have loved to see her try.
I made it to Ban Lung exhausted just as the sun was going down and found a hotel with some of the worst bedding but the best use of a toothbrush I have ever seen.
The guy in the hotel was called Kaka and was almost completely fluent in English. He claimed that he taught himself just by working in tourist restaurants and hotels and that when he started that work 2 years ago he didn't know a single word. If that's true I am beyond jealous. But we had a great evening talking about anything.
I was less that a days ride from the Laotian border now so this was my last night in Cambodia. And I couldn't have asked for a better ending. The first 5 days I spent in Siem Reap were among the worst I've had while travelling. I stand by everything I said about that place. But the other places more than make up for it. Especially the tiny little villages on dirt roads, hundreds of kms away from the nearest city. That's where the people I had hoped to meet were. They were friendly, enthusiastic, they wanted to know about me and the bike. They were proud of their homes, shops, family, they wanted to show everything off. There is this look of shock they adopt when the fat, beardy, inappropriately dressed white guy who barely knows how to walk let along ride a bike turns up and does some strange dance that later turns out to mean "Can I buy a bottle of water please?"
I am so happy that Cambodia ended this way. If my experience was limited to Siem Reap and Phnom Penh like most tourists seem to then I would have come away completely disillusioned with the entire country. But now I actually have good memories. I sort of wish that other people would avoid Siem Reap and go to the places I went to, but secretly I don't. I know that what I'm doing is not particularly unusual, but I'm terrified that if it becomes too common then the charm of Cambodia will be lost for good.
