Really!?!?! Get out?! The entire African continent? Yup!
Click on the map to see where my travels will take me over the next 4 months. This is the basic schedule with dates and locations. All camps are approximations.
Technology is a wonderful thing… when it works. Depending on connectivity and the wonders of the internet, you MAY be able to track me (and the Tour) on a daily basis. If everything works and I have access to a data connection…
The sun had just reached its zenith as the twenty and one weary sun bleached cyclists embarked upon the multi-person conveyance vehicle. Its white shell gleamed in the midday rays of golden light descending from the heavens. Its destination, Sre Ambul, a diminutive community near the west coast of Cambodia. The pilgrimage was to take four revolutions of that big hand that governs our time.
Eternity crawled at a snails pace as the wheels tracked the pearlescent markings on the hot byway. Idle chatter turned to blank stares as the occupants searched for meaning.
Finally, numb butts and cramped legs emerged from their mobile prison. Their searching eyes tracing a path from leaden feet to airy conditioning. Before the weary travellers stood Mecca. Our domicile for the night.
Holiday Inn Express!
Next to Hanoi, Phnom Penh is the largest major city we’ve been to on tour. It’s the capital of Cambodia and is home to a number of interesting sites like the Royal Palace and S21 Genocide Museum.
S21 is a depressing and sobering look at Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge’s horrifying reign of terror in the late 70’s. As one of humanities low points it was dark spot in Cambodia history. It’s an important history lesson that everyone needs to learn. Unfortunately humans, as a species, are doomed to repeat these things…today’s world leaders need to pay a visit and take a refresher course.
On the lighter side, there is the Royal Palace. A beautiful set of buildings and gardens that once housed…you guessed it… Royalty! Now, a tourist attraction, its ornate buildings and temples, shine in the sunlight. The Silver Pagoda (spoiler alert: it’s not silver!) houses a solid gold and gem encrusted Buddha and the floor is covered with silver tiles (mostly covered in carpet to protect it from thousands of tourist feet every day). The tiles inside being the source of the name.
It’s been an emotional (S21) and relaxing day of wandering around, eating junk food and sweating in the blazing sun. Tomorrow is a rare bus day. I’m not sure why we aren’t riding to our next stop. Only tomorrow will tell.
Things on these tours are always a little bit “in flux”. Most of the trips (excluding Africa: Cairo to Cape Town) run every other year. In a developing nation like Vietnam or Cambodia, a lot can change in two years! Yesterday, I neglected to mention a bridge that was there two years ago, simply vanished this year. That necessitated an on-the-fly detour. The TDA crew heads out ahead of us each morning and previews the route. If something has changed then they can message the group as we ride with near real-time updates. In that instance, it simply meant a 2km detour downstream to a different bridge. Other days they will completely change the route the day before.
That’s what happened today. During their reconnaissance for the next few days of riding they found that the old route no longer made sense, so they made a new route. This one was 10km shorter, on nicer roads and included two ferry rides. How exciting! Anything that gets you off the bike is “new and exciting”.
The first ferry simply landed on a muddy bank of the river and we all just walked our bikes on. About half our group ended up on it with half of our support crew and vehicles. These ferries are not large like the ones you think of in major ports. They hold a few dozen scooters or maybe 6 cars.
About 40km later we got to our second ferry that was slightly larger and actually had some infrastructure to support it. Aka a cement ramp and a toll booth! Each ferry ride cost a whopping twenty five cents! How that is sustainable is beyond me. Our second boat ride took us right into the heart of Phnom Penh. It dropped us just two KM from our hotel, a very short ride past some beautiful parks and monuments.
Tomorrow…another well deserved rest day! My butt rejoices!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a concentration of places of worship in my life. In Cambodia that mostly means Buddhist Temples. I passed hundreds of them today. It was almost comical. At one point there were three right next to each other. Also scattered around, much less densely, were Islamic Temples. According to Wikipedia 96.5% of the country is Buddhist and 2.6% follow Islam (I’d say those numbers are of the actual practicing population). With all the temples there were actually surprisingly few monks out and about. I did see one monk with a gas powered Weed-whacker (Strimmer, for the Brits) that I thought was rather amusing.
The other thing they have here (we started seeing and HEARING them in Vietnam, near the border) are specially built buildings with strange holes in the facade near the roof line. They all have loudspeakers on their roofs playing constant birdsong. A very specific birdsong, Swiftlet song. It’s played in an attempt to get the birds to nest inside the building where their nests can be collected and sold for thousands of dollars per kilogram. The Swiftlets make the nests purely out of a gluey substance they secrete from glands in their bodies. It’s technically not spit…but it’s close enough. The Chinese are obsessed with the stuff and thanks to their demand, it’s stupid expensive because of its rarity and difficulty to harvest.
And finally…
Thank you Buddha! I walked out of the hotel this afternoon after the days ride looking for a convenience store to get some snacks and BAM! DQ! Literally around the corner from the hotel! This was the last thing I was expecting, but OMG what a pleasant surprise!
Now we know why Buddha is so chubby…too much DQ!
Snaking its way across much of Eastern Asia, the Mekong River winds its way from South West China, through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea. For the teenaged me, the Mekong Delta brought forth visions of the Vietnam War. I was obsessed with the topic for a short time and movies like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, fuelled that obsession.
Now I’m following its meandering path on my bicycle. We connected with it late on our 142km ride (yes! Back to back 142km rides!) today and will shadow it for the next two days all the way into Phnom Penh.
The human body is an amazing machine! A little over two weeks ago I arrived in Vietnam. I was overweight and out of shape. Ill prepared for the journey ahead of me, I struggled to finish the days in the sweltering heat and humidity. On day three, I gave up shortly after lunch feeling exhausted and very near heat stroke. That day, was humid, 32 Celsius and I stopped riding at 82km.
Today, I rode 142km in 34 Celsius and didn’t even blink. The heat didn’t bother me, the humidity didn’t bother me. Aside from a few minor aches and pains I’m doing great, and that’s just three days after the most gruelling ride of my life!
Human body = Amazing!
Ok…enough of that. Cambodia. What about this strange new country I’m in? Today was our first full day of cycling in-country. We are still very rural so not much to report. Lots of undeveloped land and nondescript vistas.
One observation so far is that the Cambodians like to build their homes on stilts. No first floor. One would expect this in areas prone to flooding, but that’s not the case here. General consensus is they do this because they like climbing stairs.
I kid…In reality it’s probably because it helps with cooling the house having airflow underfoot and it also provides a large sheltered and shaded area under the house to stay out of the sun and store things, people, cars, cattle, etc.
So far both countries have been hot. Overnight lows haven’t gone below 22C (72F) and almost every day has been over 30C (86F) from about 10am on. I think today was our hottest day yet, topping out at 34C (93F). There is zero shade on these roads. The heat off the asphalt just adds to the overall oppressiveness of it all. Good thing I’ve got a human body!
Yawn! Pool. Zzzz
Cambodian Queen Mother?
Dog with bling. Giggle!
Zzzzzzzzz!
Today was our last day in Vietnam. Great food, great people, great BIG hills. Cycling in the pouring rain was the highlight for me. It sounds odd, but it was so refreshing in contrast to the oppressive heat and humidity.
Our next country…Cambodia. It’s a new country for me. The border crossing was slow but smooth. As always, there seems to be just one person to do the hard, time consuming job and six others to watch or do the trivial fast stuff.
The ride was pretty nondescript. Much of the same foliage and landscape we’ve seen in Vietnam. I’m going to withhold judgement on differences between countries until we get a little closer to a major town. The areas near a tiny boarder crossing don’t seem to be a good representation of a country.
I’m still very tired from the epic ride two days ago and I’m very much looking forward to our rest day tomorrow. It’s going to be a very lazy day of do nothing, nap then do more nothing. Thankfully there isn’t much in the area where we are staying, so I won’t feel guilty about missing something.
What should have been a super easy day through beautiful countryside was a struggle. The previous day shattered me. My body was aching, every cell in my body screaming “Stop! Let me regenerate!” I kind of think this is what it might feel like after a dose of chemotherapy. However, unlike a cancer patient, I asked for this. I PAYED for this. I must be crazy.
Thankfully, the day involved mostly long gentle decents on smooth tarmac. We passed through numerous rubber and coffee plantations. Many of the locals working hard in the baking sun to harvest the beans and spread them out on the ground to dry.
Rubber is such a weird thing to come from a tree…isn’t nature amazing? Our poor lunch truck driver accidentally backed his brand new passenger van into one of the rubber trees and managed to bed the rear door frame badly enough that it wouldn’t open. The rubber tree immediately started oozing its white gold. I imagine that’s how it was discovered thousands of years ago. Poor Fred Flintstone probably backed his AutoRock 3000 into one and…poof rubber was born. No more stone wheels!
These two days nearly killed me! 280 km and over five km of vertical climb! Holy moley! Day 11 in particular was the toughest ride of my life! It even trumped the 50+ Celsius day in Sudan and the 208km day in Botswana. Africa was just plane flat compared to Vietnam. We didn’t have anywhere near this much climbing. Even the Blue Nile Gorge was only a little over 1000m climb. Day 11 was over 3 times that and stretched over 141Km. Just getting the 40km to lunch was an epic achievement that took almost 5 hours.
The roads were crap (a mixture of gravel and broken asphalt) and the inclines were steep (some between 10-15% grade!) For comparison, usually you won’t see more than an 8% on a major road in Canada). I actually had to get off my bike and push it up parts that were just too steep and rough to ride.
Then after all that climbing came the fun part…right? Everyone loves zooming down the back side of the mountain! Bzzzzzt! Wrong! The inclines were terrifying! The roads were even steeper on the back side and corrugated with infuriating bumpy paint lines. Like we needed a warning not to go too fast on the way down? I’m sure if I had pored water on my brakes they would have instantly turned it to steam, they were so hot. I did actually touch them with my finger and regretted it immediately. Ouch!
I ended up spending about 10 hours on the bike (on day 11) and just barely made it in before cut off. We are not allowed to ride in the dark for safety reasons. Sunset was officially 5:18, and I rolled into the hotel at exactly 5:18! One other rider ran out of time and had to be pulled off the road after spending all day fighting her way towards the finish. A real bummer not being able to complete the journey after so much struggle…but safety first.
In the end, out of 20 riders only 9 of us even attempted the entire ride. 8 finished it. A HUGE accomplishment for everyone. It truly was an epic day and real test of strength, determination and will power. It destroyed me, but I’m so glad I finished it. Tomorrow will be another matter…
