We left our inner Sydney home at 14:20. A tailwind brought us to the airport
in 20 mins, where at the curb-side we ran into the other Australian
participant, Reggie. Easy to recognise, as not too many people unload
boxed bicycles at any given time at Sydney airport. Contrary to Reggie
we didn't actually box our bikes; as in all our previous trips we merely
deflated the tires.
The next significant (and tense) moment came when we waited for our check-in luggage in Bangkok: our two backpacks and bicycles all arrived unscathed. Together with Reggie we checked into the Airport hotel—paid an arm and a leg but we did get a chance to sleep for 6 hours.
Tanin, our Thai tour-guide, and Ouh, the driver of our support vehicle, picked us up at 6:30 from the hotel reception. By the time we heaved our bikes on the top of the van, Chris, the Englishman who more-or-less is Symbiosis, had picked up the fourth and last member of our group, Ali, from her flight from London.
So, by 7:30, the tour could get on its way, by van at this stage. Our first stop was at Tanin's place, where we picked up a bike for Ali. We also left Chris behind, who was going back to Phnom Penh by air, hoping to join us again at Siem Riep. We headed straight North, with a breakfast stop at the outskirts introducing us to the local customs: the selection was between various soups with noodles or rice, or some meat or fish curry.
Before lunch time, we arrived at a reasonably posh resort at the edge of Khao
Khiaw National Park, where we moved into our rooms for the night. We took
the chance to relax for a while
at their nice pool.
In the afternoon, we warmed up with a two-hour ride through villages in the
neighbourhood, stopped for ice cream and visited the first of many pagodas. Our return to the resort
coincided quite conveniently with the Rugby World Cup semi-final of
Australia vs New Zealand. Watching the match on TV with a beer in hand
and diving for a quick swim in the pool during the breaks made for a
rather leisurely start of our big Cycle Challenge.
With a western-style breakfast in our bellies, we start our first full day
of riding on small, quiet roads through luscious countryside. Some of the
forest trails in the Khao Khiaw National Park posed some serious challenge, as
they were steep and heavily eroded
so that we had to push the bikes a couple of times, and all this in the middle of
the day when it gets very warm and the sun is high up (even in winter!).
Lunch was at a beautifully located small waterfall—naturally we needed
to test its swimming potential. We then dived into the local offerings for
lunch and chose Som Tum (green papaya salad, one of our Thai
favourites in Sydney), BBQ chicken, north-eastern style pork sausage and
sticky rice. The ride in the afternoon was longer in distance but less
difficult with good sealed roads and mostly flat terrain. A headwind did
not make it easier, but gave a bit of a respite from the midday heat, to
which not everyone had yet acclimatised.
Typically, we would stop every hour,
with the faster riders cycling 35 mins while the slower ones did 45–50 mins.
Pagodas with their ground open for public use were one of the more common rest
stops. The last 5km of the day were dirt road in dusk light, causing a bit of a
challenge to negotiate the odd potholes. We arrived just after sunset at Khang
Hin Peang, a magically beautiful
resort—tucked away deep in the forest, far away from any other road or
houses. Its patrons are, apparently, mostly people from Bangkok who come out
here for the week-end and visit a nearby white-water rafting place. On a Sunday
night it was deserted. In fact, there was some confusion at first, as our
booking had been lost and not only the guests but also the staff had left
the place. Eventually, some staff including a cook arrived and we were properly
taken care of, albeit all at a fairly basic level.
In order to avoid another late arrival, as well as the mid-day heat, we tried from now on to arrange for breakfast at 6 o'clock at the latest. After indicating that we prefer local food even for breakfast, our lovely resort provided us with a Thai breakfast, which included chicken and rice soup with boiled eggs.
We head
off into a fairly cool morning, on the dirt road back to the main road.
Now, in the morning, there is quite a bit of local traffic/migration
heading our direction: children walking or cycling to school and adults
commuting to work, either cycling or waiting for a local bus, which had
more the form of a pick-up truck.
The rest
of the day we cycled through undulating country side on good, sealed
roads. We passed rice paddies, tapioca
plantations and many small villages. Even though we had more traffic
than the day before, we thought is was still generally very pleasantly
quiet. Motorists appeared friendly and considerate (quite a contrast to
cycling in Australia). Generally, people were very friendly and children
and adults would wave to us as we cycled past. One farmer gave us some pamelo, a green,
melon-size fruit that looks inside like a very coarse grapefruit but
without the slightly bitter taste. We reach Sa Kaew, the destination for
the day, before lunch, just before it got really hot.
The restful afternoon included a Thai massage, delivered to our room: Two women showed up at our room (arranged by Tanin, who was having a massage as well), and worked on us on our bed. Afterwards we inspected the neighbourhood and visited the local market.
We continued on generally very good country roads with little traffic.
Tanin and Ouh kept us supplied with exotic (previously unknown to us)
fresh fruit at every stop, such as dragon fruit, rose apple, etc. We
also visited a bird breeding station, which housed among many other
birds and animals very impressive, huge and colourful hornbills and very noisy gibbons.
Once more, Tanin and Ouh organised lunch at a road-side food shop under shady
trees.
All the while, our friendly local Thais kept waving at us and calling out
"hello". For a short stretch, Gernot and Trudy got a special cycling
treat when slip-streaming off a small lorry going at around 40km/h. Our
second-last stop was in a village at a family's house where the old lady
was separating rice from chaff.
As we stopped there, a lot of people (mostly children) quickly gathered in a
very short time, all standing
curiously around us cyclists.
In the border town of Aranya Prathet, the most
luxurious hotel was
awaiting us, including a hot shower and Thai massage. The town is a big,
bustling beehive, full of traffic and with a large food and goods market --
just as you would expect of a border town in South-East Asia. At our hotel,
we ran into the first white people since we had left Bangkok airport.
The border is only a 7 km away. There, we left our trusted Tanin and Ouh behind. After meeting up with our new guide Dara and driver Lon on the Cambodian side, we head East. The road, Route No.5, quickly becomes dead straight and totally flat past rice paddies, 45km to Sisophon (where the main road to Phnom Penh turns South while we continue east).
We reached Sisophon after 1pm and lodged in the best hotel in town -- but still very basic with simple rooms with cold water only but with the luxury of A/C (and TV, which we didn't know whether they worked in the various hotels as we never tried them out :-) Shower, lunch, nap and then a stroll through town to the market made for a leisurely afternoon.
While the day's ride was on the way between standard tourist destinations (Bangkok to Siem Reap or to Phnom Penh), we still only passed very few Westerners, less than a handful at the border and a couple of parties at dinner in the Lonely-Planet-recommended restaurant in Sisophon, plus earlier in the day two cyclists riding in the opposite direction. The cyclists had loaded panniers and were obviously on their own, but made no sign of being interested in a chat.
6 o'clock rise before a tough day riding (we couldn't get breakfast before
that time, otherwise we would have preferred an even earlier start),
hitting the road at 7 o'clock -- if you could call the infamous Route No.6 a road: Lonely Planet (LP)
rates it the second worst in Cambodia, and Cambodia has the worst roads in SE
Asia. It's a dirt track for 80 km and
in pretty poor condition consisting mostly of potholes; only the last 30
km are paved and in reasonable good shape. The dirt track usually has a
thin sandy lane at the edge which is quite reasonable for cycling. We
clocked up no more than 20 to 22 km/h, much less than on an average Blue
Mountains fire trail. As we had to cover a long distance, we kept moving
with only short stops in between. And again, we were accompanied by
constant "hello" and "bye-bye" from the kids in the villages -- we were
happily waving back, giving our arms a break from holding on to the bike
over the rough road (although Gernot was joking about his design of a
waving machine ;-)
Reggie had to give up riding for the moment as she was in much pain in her hips and knees, mostly due to her bike frame not being suitable for her rather small size. (After Siem Reap she was biting her teeth, taking pain killers and kept going—brave girl.)
We hit Thkov, the only town between Sisophon and Siem Reap, well before lunch time, so instead of a longish stop, we only picked up some food to take away for lunch and pushed on. A somewhat exciting experience is a damaged bridge with a resulting traffic jam.
In a village an hour past Thkov our guides approached some locals, who let us
stay in their airy and shady space under
their house, complete with sitting/resting table and hammocks! We
ate and relaxed in great company: several piglets, two generations of
chicken and cats, three generation of dogs and, of course,
all the kids of the neighbourhood.
Having a dozen pairs of eyes watch over lunch got us a bit of a
zoo-animal-like feeling.
The children were shy being photographed until they were shown their pictures on the display of one of our digital cameras. Then, suddenly they could see themselves from a different view and found much pleasure in posing for photos to the extent that they started fighting over the front spots! In general, it seemed that for the village kids we were the first westerners they saw from close-up.
We reached Siem Reap late afternoon. We spent the next few hours getting
rid of the incredible layer of red
dirt we had accumulated all over us (we hadn't felt so dirty in a
long time!), sorted out our gear, had a drink, relaxed. We had dinner at
an unremarkable restaurant. The next two days we spent exploring the temples and other points of interest.
Feeling fresh and relaxed after a two-day break from cycling, we made a 6am start in order to get on the 7am speedboat across Lake Tonlé Sap. Some small excitement was generated as Gernot found his bike with a flat tyre, and we seemed to have lost our pump (as we had not needed it so far; it seems likely that it got lost in the vehicle transfer at the Thai-Cambodia border). Using Reggie's pump, the incident delayed Gernot only for five minutes.
After 13 km through outskirts of Siem Reap, the road changed for the
last 3 km into a single file, muddy dirt track with considerable damage:
it's alright to meander around all the potholes on a two-wheeled bike,
but to four-wheeled vehicles it posed a serious challenge.
With all the
traffic backed up, we wondered when and how our support vehicle would make
it to the end of the track, where we waited to board the boat.
As to be expected, there was big chaos at the end of the track, with cars, small
pickup trucks, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians moving in both directions
negotiating what was essentially a one-way lane, and all of this between parked
vehicles, loading and unloading of pick-ups and vending tables.
The speed boats, two of them, were moored a few meters offshore, the two aside, and entered via a long plank. Across from it, peddlers calling "Madame—buy brechies" (bread and cheese), selling baguette and la vache qui rie processed cheese. We disembark in an interesting way at Kompong Chhnang.
On the short ride of 3km to the guest house we passed French inspired
administration palaces and large French colonial-style
town-houses but also smaller,
typical Khmer-type town houses, small wooden houses on stilts standing on the
river banks, fishing boats and house boats behind
them and several markets. Our guest house was neatly tucked away in a quiet
corner of the town with a lush, shady yard, clean, spacious, well lit
rooms and modern facilities like A/C, fridge, TV, hot water (which we
didn't need for the shower as much more to do our laundry). At the guest
house there were an other couple of white tourists, otherwise we didn't come
across any westerners in town, which we explored as we were looking for lunch.
In Kompong Chhnang we said farewell to Dara, who has accompanied us on the boat (Lon had stayed behind with the car). We had met the new guide, Phea Rak and driver at the boat landing place. They had a huge bus (seats at least 20!)
In the afternoon we rode through neighbouring villages. The area is a former Khmer-Rouge stronghold. The people make their living off farming and pottery -- the country is very futile, the land and bush is very lush and just wonderful to explore by bike. Kompong Chhnang was such a pleasant change from the tourist trap Siem Reap.
With a hearty breakfast specially arranged for us at 5:30, we took off at 6:00
and reached the day's first destination, Udong, before 10am. There we
finally met up with Chris again, who
was hoping to accompany us from Siem Riep, but in the end it was only
half a day. Together, we visited a nearby pagoda. Chris then led us along small back
roads between the usual rice paddies, through small villages and along a
couple of lakes—simply pleasant, wonderful riding. We savoured a
noodles-with-beef lunch along the way in a small village and continued
along rice paddies and lakes until we hit the main road again, 15 km
outside Phnom Penh.
We could ride right into the city on wide
boulevards
along the Mekong river, straight to the centrally located
hotel,
directly between the Royal Palace and the river.
We enjoyed the sunset at the river banks and then indulged in drinks at the
Foreign Correspondent Club.
Chris and another staff member from his company took us for dinner to a
restaurant popular with the locals—once more, we were the only whites!
After the day's rest, we were ready to hit the road again. We departed at 6 o'clock after yet another breakfast kindly organised very early. We were able to see how Phnom Penh wakes up between 5:30 and 6am: the street lights go off, traffic starts to increase, joggers are out. The rather sticky weather gets people up and out early in this city. As we were riding outward, we didn't have to fight the heavy city-bound traffic.
Today, we were not so fortunate to be able to ride on any back roads -- it was Route No.1 all the way. For the first 65 km along the Mekong, the road was quite good: all sealed and in moderate shape and only a few of these giant potholes. However, the surface is rather rough, the wind changing from the left side to head-on; all in all, we aren't moving very fast.
Mid morning at Prek Vatt we took a big ferry across the Mekong to Meak Luong,
with all the usual Asian organised chaos. From that point on, the road
is mostly new, in excellent condition (no big potholes, no narrows, no
unsealed patches) -- great for motorists, but terrible for cyclists. In
particular, the surface was very rough tar, the road running on wide
foundations with none of the old, shady trees left along the street. We
took a long (3 h) lunch break at Kampong Trabek, just under 90 km since
we started.
This was at a small restaurant
where we ate well and then had a lie down on some rest mats.
The going was much less tough in the afternoon, as the wind had died down, the temperatures were off their midday peak and the surface was somewhat smoother. We arrived at Svay Rieng just for sunset. There were still some school kids on their way home. One of them on a bike accompanied us into town to our hotel, as he was interested in making conversation and practising his English. Incidentally, he told Trudy that his ambition was to study mathematics -- she couldn't support him more in his endeavour.
Since we left Phnom Penh, we had not come across any westerners; even the two WHO four-wheel drives that we saw on the ferry (and again at the hotel) were also occupied by Asians.
As we had another border crossing ahead, we wanted to get a particularly
early start and thus left even before 6 o'clock. We passed some
fishermen, who were already at work,
and stopped for breakfast ca. 10 km down the road in a
little town with a
small market and wonderful French style bread rolls! We must have been indeed
close to the Vietnamese border, where the French influence on the
culinary life is unmistakable. The bread accompanied a good
old-fashioned Asian breakie with fried eggs, rice and fried pork.
The last 15 km to the border was a single file construction site—the road works
were at various stages of de- and construction, about half of it not
unlike a MTB training ground. It looked like this time next year, the
whole stretch from the Mekong crossing to the Vietnamese border will be
one, big, new, bike-unfriendly road.
At the border we bid
farewell to our Khmer guides. At the Vietnamese side our Vietnamese
guide, Choan, was already waiting for us. He, together with his
trainee Tienh (whose English was poor but his German excellent) took
us first to a nearby shady place for
drinks and fresh fruit and a briefing before we moved on. Choan was
then riding with us (even though he claimed he was using his bike one rarely).
The road from the border would put most Australian roads to shame: wide lanes
were flanked with wide cycling lanes
and all in perfect condition, not even a hint of a pothole; the road
was lined with street lights and we saw a "normal" amount of traffic
signs (unlike in Cambodia, where we couldn't even remember where there
were any traffic signs outside the main centres).
The contrast of the (relatively) affluent Vietnam to the poor Cambodia was
striking in many ways: Here, people are wearing shoes or proper sandals
rather than only thongs. Many women wear elegant dresses, both western
style and the traditional national gown ao dai, which is a
close-fitting blouse with long panels in the front and the back that is
worn over loose black or white trousers. Schoolgirls all wear
immaculately white ao dais. Houses are made of stone and often
several stories tall with only a few old wooden huts in between;
traditional wooden huts were what we almost exclusively encountered in
Cambodia outside the main city centres.
Traffic in Vietnam was still mostly 2-wheel, but now mostly motorised.
Everything looked very clean and seemed to be in proper working
condition and run efficiently. We felt as if we had stepped out of the
third world and into somewhere in Southern Europe (except for the higher
efficiency :-) It is astounding what the hard-working and
entrepreneurial Vietnamese have achieved in a country destroyed by 30
years of (international) war, exposed to US embargo for decades,
hostility with the big Communist neighbour, China, and the collapse of
their last powerful friends, the USSR. Our general impression was that
people in the Saigon area were well off compared to Cambodia, at least
comparable to what we had seen in (rural) Thailand.
We first started to ride 20 km along the main road towards Saigon—still
a fairly pleasant experience thanks to the good road conditions and the
changed scenery that kept us busy taking in the new impressions. We then
turned off onto small country roads, which were in only slightly less
perfect condition, but most of all with much less traffic. To our
amazement, we encountered a forest
fire warning sign that looked almost like home!
While not with the same regularity and intensity as in Cambodia, we were still being "hello-ed" and waived at. In our experience, a major common denominator of the three countries was, apart from the weather, the friendliness of the people. It was quite impressive, wherever we went!
At around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we reached the
official end of the
cycling trip at the tunnels of Cu Chi, 822 km since the start 13
days ago. There was an
impressive welcome, a big banner across the street, a drummer band (of
what seemed to be the Vietnamese equivalent of the former East Germany's
Young Pioneers), a bottle of Bulgarian champagne etc.
Lunch was then served at a magic spot
on a terrace over the Saigon river; water grass and water flowers were
slowly gliding down while we indulged in our first Vietnamese meal of
many more to come. They seemed to have been prepared for a much larger
horde of heavy duty cyclists with a big beer thirst:
four 2-litre bottles of cold beer were ready on our lunch
table—Gernot being the only
beer drinker in our group simply had to give up after half a bottle...
Refreshed and replenished, we inspected the tunnels, which were part of the 200 km underground network dug between 1945 and 1965 by the Viet Minh / Viet Cong, who used to play hide-and-seek first with the French, then the Americans forces. The space underground and the tunnels are much more claustrophobic than the average WW-I underground dugout. Obviously, we saw some western tourists here (except for two couples at the border, this was again the first time since we left the last major city, Phnom Penh).
Both of us had so far not been pushed physically to the limit and now saw an opportunity for a last decent workout. We decided to cycle on towards the city, Saigon, in spite the worries of the overly protective guides that the traffic would be too hectic and dangerous. We did about 23 km more on country roads until it became too dark to continue—the roads did have the occasional potholes; the dark and riding fast, we simply couldn't see enough and were not particularly visible either.
After we stowed away our bikes in the support vehicle—we had now clocked up a total distance of 845 km—and while being chauffeured into town, we saw no reason why we could not have cycled all the way into the city centre, had we not run out of daylight. Only for the last 10 km from the city centre did the traffic become so dense that one would not want to lead a group of non-local cyclists, although 2 to 3 confident cyclists, of which one knows the way, should not be a problem.
When we arrived in Saigon proper, we dropped off our bicycles at the
headquarters of Vidotour, the company
of our Vietnamese tour guides. They occupy an old French villa,
complete with guard and barbed wires along the property walls. We could
store our bikes with the tour company until we travelled home, including
having them clean and box up our bikes -- nice service!
We then checked into the hotel, which was quite upmarket and centrally located
—a very comfortable choice for a stay of three days! Although, first
we made a big mess of our room by spreading
out all our dirty gear ;-)
That night we were taken to an excellent dinner, a BBQ place that is popular
with the locals (we were the only whites in a huge place with several
outdoor sitting areas). Walking to our table we passed through the
showroom of a motorbike dealer (it felt a bit like an Asian version of
the MG Garage restaurant in Sydney). BBQ here meant that a little
heath full of burning coal was brought to
the table with, in our case, squid, deer, beef, and boar accompanied by
interesting spicy sauces.
This was followed by more meat cooked at the table on a
hot plate on little stoves, a version we
know from Vietnamese restaurants in Sydney.
We had two and a half days in Saigon, mostly on our own (Choan took us to another nice dinner on Friday night). Finally, on Sunday afternoon Trudy and Gernot got picked up by Choan and a driver to be taken to the airport. Reggie had an earlier flight and got an earlier lift while Ali's flight wasn't until the evening.
We stopped by at Vidotour again, where we inspected the bicycles, now all cleaned and in boxes, which then were taped up and loaded on our van. After that, it was a short quick drive out to the airport. Check-in was uneventful, so was immigration (except that it was really slow!) While waiting in the lounge Gernot had the first signs of diarrhoea, which was to become a major annoyance for the following three weeks (none of the others got any). In spite of all precautions, there's always a risk! At least a giardia infection isn't something that causes long-term problems.
The main event of the return trip (Singapore Airlines via Singapore) was a delayed departure in Singapore due to mechanical problems. They decided to substitute the aircraft, and we ended up two hours late in Sydney on Monday morning (enough for Gernot to miss a meeting he didn't even know he had!)
All in all, we cycled 845km in eight full and two partial cycling days. Generally speaking, the cycling wasn't particularly challenging, owing to the extremely flat landscape and that we did not have to carry anything but ourselves and an hour's supply of water.
The main challenge was the temperature, of course. Typical mid-day temperatures were probably around or above 30°C (we didn't measure it), and around mid-day there was essentially no shade on the road. However, the heat could be managed by an early start (which wasn't always possible, as we were relying on people preparing our breakfast) and a lengthy (at least 2h) lunch break. When we had things under our control, we started riding at about 6:00, which was around the time when it was light enough to ride safely. This way it should also be feasible to do over 100km even with panniers full of gear. This is consistent with our experience of cycling the Australian tropics (from Townsville to Alice Springs).
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