Looking back at Cambodia again

We keep a daily journal for our own records. Looking back over our journal for Cambodia we realised we ought to recount a couple more of our memorable cycling days there.

If you've read the blog entry called 'First fortnight in Cambodia' you'll recall that from Phnom Penh we cycled north up the Mekong River for three days to a place called Kratie where we wanted to see the endangered freshwater dolphins. You'll also recall that we described in mostly positive terms the bike ride north through an endless parade of rural life, including the incident with the farting granny and the wanking boy. From Kratie we had hoped to catch a boat back to Phnom Penh, but inexplicably (and absurdly, given the state of the roads!) long-distance boat services no longer run up and down the Mekong in Cambodia. We didn't fancy taking a bus so we had little choice but to retrace our steps, and since the route would be familiar we decided to attempt the 220kms in two days instead of three. Unfortunately we misjudged the effect of heavy rain on the unpaved roads; these turned out to be two of the most gruelling days of the trip so far:

Day 1 (120kms) was a Buddhist festival so Hannah resolved to try to be calm and 'Buddhist' and not to get wound up by everybody. She did quite well until about mid afternoon. During the morning we came to a section of road that was still completely submerged by floodwater, taking instead a diversion through a Muslim village that can only be described as medieval-looking! Hannah made an MP3 recording of some of the sounds of the village, which we'll upload to this blog if we can figure out how to. We didn't find anywhere to eat during the morning so come lunchtime we were starving. In Chlong (farting granny's town) we rolled into a place describing itself as a 'Guesthouse and Restaurant' and asked to eat. Three people looked blankly at us until one finally led Zoe into the kitchen to show her a bone and half a cucumber. We got back on the bikes. A little further along the road it started to rain heavily so we pulled up at a roadside stall and were relieved to see some toasted baguettes and hard boiled eggs. We felt we made it clear that we needed to eat something and couldn't understand why the two teenagers running the stall didn't slice up the eggs and put them into baguettes for us. Frustrated, Zoe took over, saying 'here, peel the eggs like this and...' ...and discovered the reason for the teenagers' hesitation in giving us the eggs. Each one contained a fully developed (and hard boiled) duckling. We settled for plain baguettes dunked in some condensed milk.

Later that afternoon it rained so heavily we couldn't see where we were going. People continued to stare and shout 'hello' at us from under the awnings of their houses, and Hannah expressed frustration that nobody invited us to shelter. Eventually we found an unoccupied awning and after a while a woman came out of a house to give us some delicious banana-leaf parcels containing steamed sticky rice and fruit. Hannah had to eat her words about people not taking the initiative. We realised that people would probably love to show hospitality towards us if only we would let our guard down and also stay still long enough to let them build up their confidence.

Remember that Cambodian rural homes have neither electricity nor running water. During the afternoon we stopped for a sugar cane juice outside a house and – using the picture of a squat toilet in our 'point-it' book - asked the vendor if we could use her facilities. She indicated that she had no loo. We speculated that either a. she thought we specifically wanted to use a ceramic squat toilet and would not wish to use the drop-style loo that they probably have, b. she was ashamed of their basic facilities, or c. they really have no loo of any kind in the house.

By late afternoon we reached a stretch of road that on our way north had been very bumpy but quite solid. To our horror the rain had transformed this stretch to deep mud. People attempting to travel between villages to join their families for the festival had doubtless made matters worse. It took us an hour and a half to travel about 10kms along this stretch, often having to push the bikes due to their weight and our touring tyres' inability to gain any traction. This was stressful, not least because our painfully slow progress meant we felt trapped amidst the gawping, shouting people, some of whom (only men) had clearly been drinking.

It was at this point we were approached by a young woman teacher who wasted no time in inviting us (in good English) to stay the night with her family and to participate in the festival. She doubted we would make it in time for the last cross-river ferry of the day at 5pm (sunset is at 6), which would render us stranded on the wrong side of the river in Mudville. Remembering the rice parcel lady Hannah was starting to think maybe we should accept this invitation but, turning to Zoe, was startled by some rare decisiveness: 'No, I don't want to stay here. I've just had my arse slapped twice by this old woman'. Presumably she wanted to see what it would feel like. We know this is a cultural thing, but we just hate having our personal space invaded like this! So we pushed on as fast as our mud-caked bicycles would carry us and made it to the last ferry. The sun soon set and we had to cycle the last hour or so in the dark. Some stretches of road were thronged with (unseen) festival-goers and barking dogs, while other stretches were just total blackness. We came across a mangled motorbike surrounded by an ominously quiet crowd. It was all quite scary. On finally arriving in the town we drank cans of beer through straws to celebrate being alive whilst washing down our bikes, panniers, shoes and legs with a hose.

On Day 2 (100kms) we felt physically and psychologically drained from the previous day's exertions. Although the weather and therefore the (again unpaved) road were initially drier this was to be another exhausting and filthy day. In the morning heavy vehicles loaded with festival-goers covered us with dust. We couldn't face all the hellos, so we put our headphones in and our heads down for 60 bumpy kilometres until we reached the main road in the afternoon. It was at this point that it started to rain heavily again, and to their credit the usually maniacal Cambodian drivers slowed down quite a bit. Nevertheless, trying to balance 100 kilograms of self and bike along the very edge of a too-narrow busy main road required every ounce of concentration and upper body strength, so it was a nice bit of comic relief to come across a badly flooded paddy field where some enterprising person had rented out home-made pedalos (!) and people were doing their best to enjoy the public holiday despite the weather.

As we neared Phnom Penh we were gobsmacked to find that the perfectly good paved road we had left the city on (the main road between the country's two largest cities) had disintegrated! Cars, buses and lorries queued to bump and splash their way through enormous potholes, while hundreds of motorcyclists (and two bedraggled bicyclists) jossled their way up the sodden, sandy hard shoulder. Some of the potholes were so deep we would have fallen off our bikes had people not already marked the spot by placing plastic chairs or tree branches into them as a warning! Through all this people continued to call 'hello' to us.

We'd also like to tell you about our journey from Battambang towards the Thai border town of Pailin. In Battambang we'd been warned we would be 'orange' by the end of the day, and our informant was not wrong! What is incredible is that the 100km road from Battambang to the Thai border is not simply in a bad state of disrepair: it has never been paved. There is a photo on our Flickr page that gives some sense of this road. Although it was exceedingly bumpy (which is hard-going on the wrists in particular) traffic was light and (of course) slow, so we were in pretty good spirits all day until it started to get dark. It was at this point that a curious thing happened. Suddenly, and for the first time in the trip, dogs started to chase us. [This is a major hazard in Thailand too, where the lack of cyclists is presumably the reason.]

We made it to Pailin with frayed nerves and, having checked into a guesthouse, went out in search of a late supper and a drink. In a relatively (for Cambodia) up-market restaurant we were seated at a large table in a sort of private booth. A couple of uniformed waitresses hovered around, putting more ice in our beer every few minutes. [If you've never had ice in your beer you should really try it.] After a while they settled themselves down at our table without being invited and proceeded to chat and play with the ringtones on their mobile phones. Then a couple more waitresses joined them, followed by the manageress. As we ate one of the girls started to relate a story to the manageress about some kind of sexual assault. Although we couldn't understand a word we could follow the dramatic story because she demonstrated what had happened, using the manageress as 'victim', grabbing her boobs, embracing her, pretending to throttle her and so forth. We were gripped by what we can only hope was the plot of a popular soap opera.