Amy & Wim

Cambodia is a land of contrast. There is village life, where things have not changed in hundreds of years. And there is city life, where the economy and the way of life are changing everything.

Cambodian Village Life

The houses out in the countryside are simple bamboo boxes on sticks. They have no doors, which allows for a nice breeze to flow through, keeping everyone cool during the night. During the day though, the whole family, along with the cows and the pigs, sit in the shade under the house. Strangely enough though, the "hotels" always seem to be concrete boxes with tin roofs. And in places without electricity for a fan, that really makes for hot, sweaty nights!

As we would ride past these houses, about 40% of the village (40% of Cambodia is under the age of 15) would come flying out of the shade, gleefully shouting,"helllloooo, helllloooo!" The kids made us smile and feel welcome as we biked through the countryside, and we appreciated their enthusiasm as the adults were often very stoic and reserved towards us.

It surprised us to see how the people in the countryside live. Had we been passing through 200 years ago, I doubt that it would have been any different. People would often be pulling heavy carts that should have been pulled by strong animals, small children were doing heavy labor, schools and hospitals were non-existent, and most of the people were just sitting around without any opportunity to find a job. Restaurants (if there were any) consisted of a table on the side of the street with one pot of noodle soup.

Each village that we went through had a single specialty. If you are in a stone carving village, all you see is stone carvers, and you can bet that there is no one selling sugar cane juice. But if you are in sugar cane village, you will find a lady selling sugar cane every 5 meters at the same price. But imagine that you are hungry, you have to wait for noodle soup village if you want anything to eat. For two unlucky days, we went through one sugar cane village after the other. There was no noodle soup village in sight. We had to bike on sugar cane power alone, which gave us a very liquidy feeling throughout the day.

However hungry that we were while riding through the country side, we always hesitated a bit to enter a restaurant. It was always a problem. As we would enter a restaurant, everyone would quickly rush to the back of the restaurant to avoid contact with the scary foreigners. As I approached them, they would either stare like a dear in the headlights, or they would start vigorously cleaning things, hoping that I would just leave. Sometimes we were doing dramatic gestures and attempts at communicating using our Cambodian phrasebook. Instead of helping the situation, it usually just caused widespread panic and confusion. We went through this over and over again, every time that we wanted to eat something.

When we finally met someone who was calm enough to look at us and listen, we would order a noodle soup (that's all there is to eat). Unfortunately for us, the deeper we got into the countryside the more strange the meat floating in our soup became. Sometimes we had so many vital organs floating around in our soup, that we could have probably created a new life form if we had stirred hard enough. So, after the long struggle for a meal, our meals were more for survival than for relishment.

City Life

Of the few cities that there are in Cambodia, they are crowded and chaotic. But, you can also find a clean bed and electricity, which meant the world to us after days and days of riding through little villages. Unlike in Thailand, we were relieved to find a tourist place. It meant that people wouldn't run away from us (one school teacher even dragged us to his school and made Amy sing Jingle Bells), we didn't have to eat organ soup, and we could cool down at night with a fan. It was like heaven!

Although traveling through this country was really dusty and not always fun, it was incredibly interesting and we wouldn't have had things any other way.

Dirt. Lots of dirt. Dirt up our nostrils, in our undies, and crunching between our teeth. The minute we crossed the border and entered Cambodia, our brand-new, four-lane highway vanished, and 150km of this lay before us:

We had to wear surgical masks inorder to breathe.

The last three days we spent making our way through the dirt cloud to Siam Riep to visit the Temples of Ankor. Despite the bad road, we were glad that we didn't have to take public transportation.

Actually, we have to say that we liked the route a lot. Along the way we saw lots of rural villages with folk music blasting from public speakers. We also saw people praying in the temples, happy naked children playing in drianage ditches, farmers hearding cows down the middle of the highway, and we got to taste some really strange tasting meats.

Now we are in Siam Riep and this morning we biked around the temples.

The coolest temples are the ones that are squashed by trees.

However, we had to go back to our hotel in the afternoon because the sun was starting show it's negative effects on Amy.

Wim and I are on a fantastic adventure. Yet, I have to admit that part of the time, we just want to fly home and sit on the couch. This is normal when you are biking for a year. The road is not always downhill, the sky is not always clear, and the people are not always smiling. Therefore, you have to find something to motivate youself during those "couch" moments. You need something that inspires you to go further, to extend the boundaries of your limits, and to reach for your dreams. This woman and her collegues provided that for us as we made our way through Thailand.

As soon as we'd see one of these women motoring by us, Wim would yell, "GO,GO!", and then I was expected to pedal like hell. Sometimes it took half an hour to catch up with her, sometimes less. When we caught up, we were sweaty and gross, but for an ice cream (stuffed between sliced bread), it was always well worth the effort.

We are now past Bangkok and we will soon be in Cambodia. Of course, as you near a new country, people always start to warn you. We've heard a lot of warnings over the past 7 months, yet somehow....you always keep them in the back of your mind as you enter a new place, because you never know... they just might be true this time.

Cambodia warnings:

• The border gaurds/policemen will demand large bribes.
  
• They hate Americans and won't issue a visa for Amy.
  
• Fasten all of your bags to your bike so that passing mopeds won't snatch them.
  
• When you get robed, don't reach into your pockets, or they will shoot you.
  
• The roads are worse than in Indonesia.
  
• There are landmines everywhere.
  

With these well-wishings, we prepare for the next country, but our biggest concern is really: will there be ice cream ladies to keep us going strong?

Our schedule:

6:00 - We wake up and go as soon as there's light. During the afternoon, it can get up to 40°C (104°F), and it's hard not to overheat. (Wim cleverly cut apart two sombreros and attached them to our helmets for added sun protection) At 6am though, the heat is not as bad.

6:30 - We head for the morning market, which is packed with people cooking, buying, and socializing even before the sun rises. Here they sell everything you can imagine, and it's all made fresh right in front of you! Wim always searches out a breakfast full of legs and antennae, and I head for the curry stalls. Forget oatmeal, we've come to crave spicy fish curries in the morning.

7:00 - We start out. The roads have big shoulders, there is hardly any traffic, and limestone cliffs loom up around us.

Dogs chase us through the streets. Whole families shoot by on their little mopeds, all wearing big smiles and waving at us.

10:00 - Our first break. As soon as we get tired we search out a little shack to sit down for something cold to drink and something yummy to eat. Our search usually lasts about 2 minutes, because in Thailand almost every house is a restaurant, and they all make delicious food.

However, ordering is sometimes a problem. Despite my efforts to learn some thai, it is a tonal language, and so I seem to say everything wrong. One morning I went to a restaurant and asked for an iced tea with lime. Everyone in the restaurant broke into laughter, and when they finished they all just stared at me. No lime tea for us that day.....Also, the writing is different, so we can't read menus.

12:00 - Lunch.... if we are successful ordering it. Thai people always give us an honest price, so we don't have to ask the price before we eat, argue about the price after we eat, or fight for our change like we did in the Middle East. The people here are honest, helpful, and they always have a huge smile.

Once, as we approached a city, famished and looking for a restaurant, Wim quickly pulled into an empty restaurant on the side of the road. I said," No,no, let's go to that restaurant up the road where all of those people are." So, off we went. As we pulled up to the restaurant, a hoard of people were excitedly motioning to us to come and sit down to eat with them. It was sort of strange that they were so enthusiastic for us to eat at the restaurant, but we like enthusiastic people, so we sat down. Before we knew it, a man was bringing out plates and plates of food to our table. Everyone was laughing and excited. So you can imagine our surprise when we looked around to see a dead guy in a casket across the way. We had just crashed our first funeral.

1:00 - We bike our final kilometers in the afternoon, sometimes stopping because we are turning red and feeling woozey from the heat. We find a shady spot and munch mangos until our tummies hurt. The dogs even stop chasing us when it's this hot.

3:00 - We end our day early, find a clean, cheap room and head for the night market to stock up on weird fruits and yummy snacks (barbequed bananas, grilled lobster, rice blubber cakes, spicy chicken legs, fruit shakes). Then we have time to relax and explore the village. Thailand is so fantastic for bike touring, that we are enjoying ourselves more than ever before!

Our route:

From Malaysia we crossed the border on the hilly west coast, and are heading north towards Bankok. Along the way we plan out where we'd like to go next. Problem is that we don't know Thailand, so we relie on our Lonely Planet guide for advice. When they advise a 'paradise beach', we, like every other Lonely Planet guide owner (= everyone and their dog), get all excited and head out for that spot. As we approach this 'paradise beach', skin tones turn from brown to bright pink, restaurants start advertising english food and sauerkraut, people are leaping around in tiny speedos, no one is waving, and no one smiles. Suddenly it occurs to us.... we have entered.... Little Europe!

We have made this 'Little Europe' mistake a few times. We once even went as far as to buy a boat ticket to a 'paradise island'. As we sat in the waiting area for the ferry, hundreds of people started arriving in cattle cart busses. Panic stricken, I turned to Wim and said,"refund?" Before I could say another word, Wim was off returning our tickets. We biked off that day, and unexpectedly came upon a desserted beach. Twelve kilometers of white sand for Amy, Wim, a sunset and an ice cold pintje.

The road in between the tourist attractions is really the best place to be. Where else can you crash funerals, eat octopus on a stick, or ride with four people on a moped?