Day 8 15th November Siem Reap Longer Temple Tour (Cambodia). 83Km

Day 8 15th November Siem Reap Longer Temple Tour (Cambodia). 83Km




After the previous night's problem with seeing (or not seeing in the sunset) I decided to give the option of getting up at 4.30am and seeing the sunrise from a temple a miss. My hunch was that it would be overcast and cloudy. Jim and Mary went and they did see a spec of sunrise, but I did not miss anything and did manage to get a few extra hours in bed.

They went by van and on return we set of with Tanyet for the longer cycle tour of the temples. Once again I had to get a "photo" ticket (Jim and Mary had already gotten theirs for the sunrise viewing). It was quick though.

Then we set off on another glorious day, at first we followed the route from the previous day. At one point I found that my foot was locked to the pedal (I use specials shoes and pedals that clip together, a twist is supposed to release them). We stopped and it turned out that I had a screw loose - in my shoe - so when I twisted my foot instead of unclipping it twisted the cleat. We managed to unlock it and I carried on - making sure I used the flat side of the pedal. Keen readers will already have read that I have taken my own pedals with me, one side clips the other side is normal.

Jim is off in the distance, with Tonyet at the side of the road. Although Tonyet is not old, around 30, and does cycle he finds the pace we set a little challenging sometimes. The side tracks were generally of this standard with only the occasional rut.

At this time of year you often see rice being harvested.

The landscape is also really lush, as the rains have only recently stopped.

The loop we followed this time was much larger, allowing us to see temples that were more of the normal tourist track. Although it is clear that there is work to make it easier for tourists. Western style tourists are being built and new large roads were under construction. Some of the temples were quite long, the longest, we worked out as 800m in length, using Jim's GPS.

One of the reminders of Cambodia's turbulent past is several rusting artillery guns in the fields. Apparently it is safe to wander away from the road here.

The beauty of the back roads is that you see some interesting makeshift bridges. These help to reduce the traffic that uses them. None of us cycled over this one, when you are only halfway through a 1000Km cycle challenge it would have been foolish to break a leg trying to get over this sort of bridge, we all walked.

Mary decided to go back to the hotel at lunchtime because she had bruised her hand the previous night when she fell and wanted it to be ok for the long rides coming up. Jim and I carried on with Tonyet. Wherever we stopped we seemed to gather an audience. Sometimes they were trying to sell us things and other times just curious. I guess most western tourists get whisked around in air-conditioned buses, they don't get to see hot and sweaty western cyclists very often.

Often when you enter the girls will try to sell their wares and ask your name, when cycling it is not feasible to buy much stuff, however I did decide to by another krama (Cambodian multi-purpose scarf). So when approached I said I would by one on the way back. When we returned to the entrance there was a bidding war for my business and since I had to go to my bike for the money it went on and on. Actually it is quite sad to see young girls desperate to sell scarfs for around a $1 each, it is a reminder of how difficult life is in Cambodia.

I did consider taking up a career as a hawker. Custard (my mascot) got a lot of attention from many of the youngsters, they all wanted me to give him to them. So when asked I started quoting prices, fortunately for Custard the kids wouldn't bite at $20 :-)

We saw 7 temples in total during the day and they all seemed to be different. This one is made from the local latterite stone.

The towers frequently appear in threes though. On this ride we cycled on one wall of one of the larger temples, alongside a man-made lake. It was deserted, the path was thin though and there were cows and trees to watch out for.

At one stop we had a Pepsi, one of the challenges is finding really cold drinks. They are either not cold or cooled with ice. The ice is in big blocks and so does not effectively cool the cans. Whenever we were approached to buy a drink Jim would insist he would only buy if it was cold and they would invite him to feel the cans. In one Temple he visited every single drinks seller (10ish), but none were really chilled - unfortunately Cambodian Cold was not quite cold enough. Jim has become the tour's official tester for beer coldness.

At some of the Temple grounds there were restaurants, think wood open air shacks, all advertising a US style WC, however modern western style toilets were being built, the only challenge was finding them and then the long walk to get to them. I took this picture on the way back from one very attractively located Toilet block.

On one stop, we tried the local palm sugar, made from the Palm trees. When travelling you are always told not to eat food at stalls, but we both sampled some, probably just the job when a cyclist bonks. (Again keen readers will understand this cycling reference and JIm and Mary also use the term). This lady gave us both free samples, I think they enjoy the notoriety of Barang visitors.

I could not resist this picture of the tree "reaching" over the wall.

As the day wore on we heard high pitched whining noises coming from the trees, I thought it was a motor whining as it was so loud. Actually it was the Cicada insects, it only occurred within the space of an hour or two during the afternoon. This video is a recording of the sound, so don;t expect much from the picture. It is quite loud so if you are at work you might want to turn the volume down a little.

This picture is taken from the long (800m) temple. When we visited the temple we only actually visited the front gate and Tonyet was surprised we were back so soon (I think he needed to rest), when we went back and through the gate to the actual temple were were amazed both how long it was and how we had missed it. This is a building within the Temple grounds - almost Roman in style.

On the way back we also saw some monkeys by the roadside trying to get things to eat. Here Tonyet and Jim are having a chat with one. The video is of a money eating a banana, not very original, but not the sort of thing I usually see when cycling though Wicken Fen in England.

In fact it is slightly surreal to see monkeys wandering around.

There are also quite a few water buffalo around, here is one rooting in a field, it is staked though, clearly too valuable to lose. We also passed a dead water buffalo on a cart being towed somewhere to be butchered. They don't have refrigerated vans around here.

This was the view on the other side of the road from the water buffalo, the scenery is quite spectacular.

After a while you get punch-drunk seeing so many ancient buildings, although we did carry on to the bitter end. I took this as we passed by, it was a temple we had visited the day before.

Cambodians were always very friendly, after we had climbed one temple a guard grabbed Jim and pointed him in this direction so that we could take pictures of the three towers peeping through the forest.

As I have mentioned the steps within the temples were incredibly steep. In some places people were struggling to climb them.

Here you can see how much damage has occurred over the years and how the Cambodians are trying desperately to halt the damage.

I have been taking my anti-malaria tablets regularly, however the best thing to do is avoid getting bitten. Mosquitoes seem to come out in the early morning and in the evening. When we go out in the evening then we use lots of spray (in my case DEET based). This swamp picture was taken right next to the entrance of one temple. A reminder that we needed to head for the hotel before it got dark.

After visiting the temples. there was a 15-20K ride back to town. Both Jim and I sat behind Tonyet, pushing him to go faster - when following you use less effort so it was a bit unfair, but Tonyet is much younger. We managed a fair pace back and then started mixing it with the local traffic; cars, motor bikes and bicycles. It is chaotic, but great fun and as we were in a small group easier to keep together. When I am cycling in Cambridge I sometimes count the number of cyclists I overtake, deducting if I am overtaken. Here in Cambodia we were overtaking motorcyclists as we weaved in and out. At one point I think Tonyet was trying to give us the slip. He went through a light just as it changed to red, I followed and Jim followed me, then behind him a motorcyclist came through - laughing at us jumping the lights. (Note I never normally do this, but we had to keep up otherwise we would have been lost, at least that's my excuse.).

Later that evening as I was tapping away on my computer, these blogs take a lot of download time, there was a knock on my bedroom door. I was handed a pair of my socks that had become detached from the rest of my laundry and turned up a day later.