Day 260
Breakfast is delivered bang on time at 06:30 by a lad on a bicycle with a loudspeaker advertising his approach. Delivering soup by bike at the crack of dawn is no mean feat, but perfectly normal here.
The Cambodian border at Bavet, a 10 km ride, is remarkably efficient, despite needing to attend multiple windows for various bits of paper and stamps. The other side is chaos and a smelly, dirty mess compared to Vietnam. This is just the border region, it gets better, but on crossing I’m confronted with a wall of thick smog, traffic jams, trash everywhere and nothing but casinos (gambling is illegal in Vietnam). There’s also no money changers, maybe they’re not allowed here, after a few attempts I’m told “Chi Phu”, a town 15 km inside the border. I find an ATM but it gives me US dollars. But yes, it turns out that in Chi Phu, changing money is no problem. I still don’t understand.
The road narrows, and there’s really no choice of route as the side roads are sand, so I resolve to get to Phnom Penh, 180 km, which is going to be a long day with the border crossing. On the outskirts of Phnom Penh I spot a couple of Austin Healey 3000s in a garage. The owner presses me to park my bike and take one out for a spin. This has always been my dream car, but I wouldn’t trust myself with one in the Phnom Penh rush hour, and there’s nowhere realistic to drive one, even if I wasn’t bushed from cycling all day.
Day 262
Decision time. I’m not sure whether to bother going to Angkar Wat, on one hand it’s just another temple complex with statues and carvings, on the other it’s the biggest in the world, I’m here in Cambodia, it’s important enough to put on their actual national flag, it would maybe be a mistake to miss it. To get there will be a pair of long days to cover the 350 km or so.
Shortly outside Phnom Penh I meet a Swiss guy, living in Cambodia for the last 18 years but working around the world installing chocolate machinery. He’s on a training ride, this road (route 6) is the main cycle training route for the national team, though they passed a little earlier. We have a great chat for about 30 km out, and it’s a smooth and fast ride. After that I continue to Stueng Saen, it’s flat and there’s not much to see on the way.
Day 263
The road to Siem Reap, the city next to Angkor Wat, is flat and long. Cambodian countryside, where not cultivated, is scrubby grassland with sparse trees, pleasant to cycle through, not especially photogenic. There are a lot of villages along this road to the point where they merge into one another without a break. One place has many of the contraptions shown below, a device for pounding something and shaking something else; there are many of them in a single village, making quite a racket, and none anywhere else.
Day 264
This was supposed to be a non-riding day, a sightseeing visit to Angkor Wat. Many people cycle between the temples, it’s a lot more convenient than getting a tuk-tuk to wait for you, or being on a tour bus and the route is about 16 km, so I wasn’t even going to include it here.
On the way up to the site, there’s another cyclist: “That’s not a hire bike?”, “Neither is yours!” We cycle to the first temple where she says she’s not brought a lock so we are hooked up for the day. She is Anbera, and has cycled from China, through Vietnam and is on her way to Indonesia. We visit the main temples, then she says the Pink Temple at Banteay Srey has been recommended to her, some 30 km north. I’m in non-cycling gear (on account of the dress code for the temples) but agree to go there with her. It’s worth the trip. It dawns on me that when not on the bikes we must look like the typical old white man with young asian girlfriend, of which there are many.
In the evening I get a message that Spencer’s arrived having taken a route through the north and the Vietnamese mountains, and we catch up in “pub street”. He’s flying to Bangkok to avoid going through Laos again (the Thai border is still closed) so we may meet again further south.
Day 265
I’ve had a tailwind to get me out to Siem Reap, so of course I’m into a headwind as I head back through the north of Cambodia. After passing the airport it gets very quiet and remote, a pleasant change from the constant trucks on Road 6. It also means there are few places to stay so it will be back-to-back 160 km days again.
Day 266
It’s even more windy this morning, it feels very autumnal with leaves being blown off the trees, and it worries me given the distance I need to cover to Strueng Trung, the next town along. Luckily it eases off through the morning.
There are many fires along the side of the road, and bigger ones further out. This is cassava growing region, they burn down an area, killing most of the trees, and grow cassava for a couple of seasons. After which the soil is spent, and they move on to a new area. All the villages are involved in cassava processing, with people cutting up the roots to dry out on the hard shoulder, cutting machines driving between the villages, and ultimately massive lorries full of the dried produce.
Eventually I cross the bridge across the Mekong into Strueng Trung. Cambodia’s really grown on me, it’s shame this is my last night here. I’ve met quite a few westerners who arrived here a decade or two ago and haven’t left; this is starting to make sense now.
Day 267
From Strueng Trung it’s north to the Lao border, about 60 km. The road is lovely to ride and there’s hardly any traffic. Just before the border I get a puncture (wire again, probably been in there since Vietnam) and get passed by another long-distance cyclist.
The border is quick to cross, with visa-on-arrival and the usual nonsense. I’m the only one heading north, there’s a huge queue of Europeans the other way, presumably some coach has dropped them all here. On my side I get to have a chat and share a beer with the border guards as my paperwork gets shunted from Window 1 to 2 to 3, for no particular reason other than a fee at each one.