On Yer Bike!

Some of our more avid readers may have noticed that it's all been a bit quiet on the blog recently. There are a number of reasons for this: we've both been busy (no excuse), gathered interesting collections of internal pets (an excellent opportunity for explosive weight loss) and also been on the road quite a bit. This post is about being on the road - not for work but for recreation.

One of the things our little gang of associates here in Phnom Penh like to do is escape from the city at the weekends on our bicycles. Many of us just have the old-fashioned sit-up-and-beg VSO standards, so trips on these tend to stick to the local roads and don't generally go very far. Some of us kings of the road, on the other hand, have mountain bikes and for us the world is our horizon. Why mountain bikes in a country where the word for mountain and very small, almost unnoticeable hummock (phnom) are the same (and for good reason)? Because they have suspension. And, believe me, you need it.

Actually, we're really talking about Perry here - Sarah a) does yoga on Saturdays; b) is busy teaching English on Sunday mornings; c) doesn't have a mountain bike; and d) is far too sensible (as will become apparent, dear reader, as our story unfolds).

A typical trip will see us taking a ferry across the Mekong, sometimes via one of the islands, into the countryside. The ferries are typically full of mopeds and, just occasionally, a car or two. The one below is a really big one by Mekong standards. No, really - most of them are like extraordinarily ancient landing craft that just about have room for one car. Or an unlimited number of mopeds.

It really is quite extraordinary that you can go from a bustling, hectic city on one side of the river to a total rural backwater on the other. You ride on dirt roads, through villages where a foreigner is sometimes quite a big event. Especially a lost one in what even the Cambodians consider to be the middle of nowhere. But, again, more of that anon. Here's a picture of our intrepid explorers (Adam and Becky, plus Perry's bike) on a typical trip. Yes, we are wondering which is the right way.

Most of the riding is done on roads that are mainly used by motorcycles, like the one below. On the left is the Tonle Sap river; the Mekong is about a kilometre away on the right.

These small roads run between the small villages that the great majority of Cambodians live in: only 10% of the population live in large towns (and most of those are in Phnom Penh).

The bike helmets worn by the gang are mainly to keep the sun off! We often share the track with the animal carts that form the main source of trade in many areas. The chap below was selling pots and pans of all sorts from the back of his ox cart: it looked almost like something from a Disney film.

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the road will get much wider, as in the picture below. But such heady rushes don't usually last long.

Yes, that is a child in a mixing bowl on the back of the bike in front of us. You get to see lots of interesting and unusual sights in rural Cambodia.

And I wonder how many years it has been since anyone last played football on the pitch below. In fact, I wonder if anyone ever did, since it was in the middle of a very small village and Cambodians aren't known for their world-class premier league. Or for playing football at all. Sadly, it was probably some NGO project that, I suspect, was lauded in the press back home as a great success in bringing joy through sport to the disadvantaged people of rural Cambodia.

And then one day, Perry and Adam (a VSO volunteer who is writing a new curriculum for the Ministry of Education) decided to go in a different direction. We had a map that showed that there was an interesting route that went South out of the City (we normally go North), before crossing to the far bank and then turning back North along the river and taking the ferry back across to the centre of Phnom Penh. About 60 km (40 miles) - a nice morning's ride. At least, that was the plan. And to make doubly sure, not only did we take a copy of the route map (a low-resolution print out from Google Earth with some lines scrawled on), but Perry also took along the GPS (yes - a mountain bike with Satnav). And out we set at 7 o'clock on a fine Saturday morning.

Unfortunately, it only took about 10 km to find out that the route (given to us by another cycling group) bore little relationship to reality. We were supposed to follow a small track along the side of the river to the ferry. Unfortunately, the track led instead to a freshly ploughed field. This was not the first time that day that this was to happen to us. No problem, we backtracked for a couple of kilometres and turned inland to the main road. That was sure to take us to the ferry and indeed it did. A ferry, anyway. At this point, we did think to check our location by GPS, as we thought we might have gone a little further than the map suggested. At this point, Perry discovered that the batteries in the GPS were flat. No problem - press on!

We should now start to put things in context. The map below is of the whole of Cambodia. What we ended up doing that day (represented by the red box) is easily measurable on a map of the whole country. In fact, our route was probably traceable from space.

When we got to the far side of the river, we turned left. According to the map, Road No. 151 runs right along the East bank of the River Mekong from the main crossing to the Vietnamese border to the provincial town of Kampong Cham. According to the map. Unfortunately, our section of this major arterial trunk route started to rapidly get smaller and muddier.

And then led into a freshly ploughed field. So we turned back and tried to cut inland for a few kilometres. Straight into a ploughed field. So we turned back again and eventually found a reasonably decent dirt road. Unfortunately, it seemed to be heading away from the river somewhat. At this point,we started to get slightly concerned, so I thumped the GPS and got it to work for long enough to get a fix. OK - only about 39 km to Phnom Penh, no problem.

This little vignette was to be repeated at a number of intervals over the next 7 hours: the only thing that changed was the bearing to Phnom Penh. We had apparently found the Phnom Penh orbital expressway. Unfortunately, it neither went to nor from Phnom Penh, just a constant distance around it. On the wrong side of the River Mekong (did I mention in a previous post that it's one of the biggest rivers in the world?). With no other roads joining it at all.

The map below shows in blue where we had intended to go. With the benefit of hindsight and the most detailed map available, kindly bought for us the following day by Adam's partner Becky (who works for the World Bank and can afford such things) the line in red shows where we actually went. Not 60 km but about 185 (120 miles). We didn't make it back for lunchtime.

But we did see some beautiful sights and met some lovely people in the villages where we stopped for drinks. In one of them, what seemed like the entire village turned out to sit with us. Don't suppose they'd seem many foreigners before. On bikes. Who said they were going to Phnom Penh and was this the right way?

But eventually, there was a junction and we were able to turn back towards the river. And when, after some 10 hours in the saddle, we finally caught sight of the ferry, we were two very slightly relieved teddies.

But the day wasn't over yet: we still had to get back to Phnom Penh. One last thump of the GPS. Oh good, only about 39 km to go. Back onto the main road, where we came directly upon a small stall selling batteries that would fit the GPS - once we actually knew exactly where we were for the first time! And now it was starting to get dark and some ominous looking thunder clouds were looming in the distance (yes, that part of the distance we were trying to head towards - doesn't it always work like that?)

We kept going into the gloom (and, believe me, cycling on an unlit road in Cambodia after dark is not a life-enriching experience) until, about 10 km from the bridge across the Tonle Sap and into the City, the clouds burst with what was a particularly spectacular thunderstorm, even by Cambodian standards. Luckily, we were just passing a little shop, so we dived for cover and considered our options. That took about a nanosecond before I phoned our friend Savin, who drives a tuk tuk (a cross between a moped, a large pram and a taxi) and asked him to come and get us. But even then the day wasn't over: the storm was so severe that Phnom Penh was badly flooded and it took Savin about an hour to get to us, and on the way back through the city both Adam and I agreed that we probably wouldn't have been able to make it through on our bikes.

But finally, at about 9 o'clock, we got back home. What a day out! But what did we learn from the experience? Probably nothing, really. After all, one of us is a management consultant and the other a special needs teacher. We're well beyond any hope of learning

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