| Diary of a cyclist |
 Holiday of a Lifetime – Sue Wagner
It’s 8am – rush hour in Phnom Penh and all the locals are out on the streets preparing to enjoy the Independence Day celebrations and boat races on the Tonle Sap river. After breakfast at the hotel we are allocated our bicycles, stow our luggage in our accompanying bus, gather up our helmets, gloves and water bottles, and prepare to ride through Cambodia. We’ve met Lucky – the strikingly handsome young Cambodian Cycle Champion who is to be our Leader, and our Group Guides – Eric, Adam and Rithie. And we’ve mentally noted the existence of “the truck” driven by two young Cambodians. The Truck would become our security as it would arrive shortly behind us at the end of each leg of the journey – always with drinking water tanks for bottle refills, fruit and biscuits. In early November in Cambodia and coming in to winter but Phnom Penh is only 10º north of the Equator so even this early in the morning it is already 28 degrees and the humidity doesn’t get much below 90% at any time. Our first stop is the Killing Fields Memorial 15kms out of the city.  Lucky gives us the signal to start and suddenly I am riding in the pack – each of us wearing our distinctive white, blue and purple IWDA Challenge for Change cycling shirts. Gradually I start to breathe normally again and the terror subsides a little as I begin to enjoy my holiday cycling in Cambodia. Later in the day, and over the next ten days as we ride through the lush green countryside, around rice paddy-fields surrounded by all kinds of palms, on stony, pot-holed, dirt roads as well as narrow sealed roads, past groups of smiling children calling out ‘hello’ or raising a little hand for a ‘high-5’ – I have to pinch myself to realise that it is happening to me and it is all real! Food memories: ÿ †Breakfasts: Freshly made omelet in Phnom Penh; banana pancakes with maple syrup in Sihanoukville; friend rice and noodle soup everywhere; sweet “white” coffee in a glass – black at the top and white at the bottom - just stir up the condensed milk! ÿ †Breaks: cool green oranges, delicious tiny thin-skinned bananas, the Cambodian equivalent of delicious or russet apples; and biscuits for a quick burst of energy. ÿ †Rice and vegies – wonderful - lightly spiced, occasionally with chilli, always with variations of noodle soup. ÿ †Dessert – palm leaf packages of coconut flavoured sticky rice – yum! Other memories: ÿ †Watching boat-race practice on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh. ÿ †Finding the little French NGO thrift shop in Phnom Penh and buying silk bags and scarves and practising our rusty French. ÿ †Lunch at Raffles Hotel where we met John who knew a lot about a little orphanage off the beaten track – but no time in the schedule for us to go there. ÿ †The Russian Markets – I wish I had bought more than one of those lovely cool cotton shirts; buying a Mah Jongg set – Michelle says I’m good at bargaining! ÿ †Dinner at “Friends” – local NGO project training street kids for the hospitality industry – and giving them a home too. Great food, really good service, smiling faces of young folks enjoying the opportunity to live and work there. More shopping in Friends thrift shop next door – clever things made out of re-cycled paper and plastic. Buy a brick for the family when I get home. ÿ †Kampot – we cram ourselves into two small boats for a ride up the river with Pagnia as our guide – a resourceful little Cambodian man – “you want, I get for you …”. At the age of six Pagnia had his arms broken by twisting by the Khmer Rouge! ÿ †There are dreadful, sobering stories – and physical evidence – of tortures committed in Cambodia in the 70-80’s. There is also a great calmness in Cambodian people and a willingness to live now and move on from the past. ÿ †Ride from Kampot to Kep-sur-Mer which used to be a popular beach-side resort in French colonial days. It was wonderful to ease aching muscles with a swim in the sea for an hour before the ride back to Kampot. ÿ †Arriving at Sihanoukville 80 kms away and falling, fully dressed, straight into an unbelievable resort swimming pool – in delicious rain. ÿ †Later - gin and tonic beside the pool, beside the river, almost anywhere really! (Here with Mary and Liz.) ÿ †Le Vivier de la Paillote ……. French restaurant at Sihanoukville – incredible 3 course dinner with wines for US$25. There and back in a tuk-tuk – four of us both ways for US$5. ÿ †Dinner at Amazon Angkor – a huge buffet restaurant featuring a range of dishes including Khmer, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Chinese, French – and a barbecue! ÿ †After dinner a display of traditional Khmer dancing. When the Khmer Rouge terror was over there was only one person left in the country who could do the traditional dancing. Part of the cultural recovery of Cambodia has been to re-establish the traditional music and dancing. Often we saw, or heard, groups of two or three men in a band playing the traditional instruments and making quite beautiful music. In the group playing outside Angkor Wat all members had suffered from landmine injuries. ÿ †Outside Siem Reap – a visit to the Landmine Museum – run by Aki Ra who was a boy soldier. Since the war he has dedicated his life to clearing mines. On the same site as the museum is the home where he and his wife (who is also an expert deminer) run an orphanage for young people who have lost family members and have themselves been maimed as a result of contact with a mine or a booby-trap. ÿ †Particularly impressive and depressing facts are: ß There are still hundreds of thousands of mines in rural Cambodia and the work of de-mining the country continues; ß China, Russia, India and the USA are still producing landmines!  We rode the bikes on six of the eleven days of the tour. Once out of the city we were very much in rural Cambodia. We rode around silent, ancient temples and past shrines and intricately carved stupas; through tiny villages of a few palm-thatched huts where children would call out and laugh as we rode by; and through bigger villages with health centres, and political signs, and Toyota Camrys and Land Cruisers hurtling along with horns blaring. The Highway Code in Cambodia is interesting! Basically there are two rules: if it’s bigger than you, you give way; and if your path is clear – just go! Although strictly speaking the law requires that you drive on the right hand side of the road, this turns out to be somewhat flexible. So, when a moto with two enormous, laden, side panniers was coming towards me – on “my” side of the road – my only recourse was to quickly take to the road shoulder (wobble, wobble); deeply potholed and stony as it was it was preferable to being knocked off the road altogether! Can you imagine my thrill in staying on the bike, and just keeping going? A miniature success all of its own! Rickety wooden bridges with alternate directions of planking were another challenge – a quick learning curve to keep on the planks that were at 90º to my wheels to avoid a slip down into a groove. Rithie, our Cambodian tour guide was a great help at all the significant historical sites – here he is telling us about the history of the Killing fields – and his family’s own dreadful experiences of that time. Late in the evening of Day 8 we arrived in Siem Reap and spent the following two days exploring the comparatively sophisticated tourist city and riding around temples of Angkor Wat – again with Rithie who patiently answered all our questions. All the temples are very ancient, and much damaged but they are altogether remarkable. There is no dominant religion in Cambodia but a reverence for Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma produce a blend of Hindu with Brahmin and a hint of Buddhism. It is all very un-obsessive and peaceable. Being largely a secular society (like the French who colonised them so successfully two centuries ago) means they avoid religious internal divisions but it also has meant less societal structure. There is no municipal infrastructure outside of the towns. There is plenty of water but it is not well managed, and all drinking water comes in plastic bottles. An enormous quantity of plastic bottles and bags forms a dreadful pollution problem in the countryside where rubbish lies around in heaps in the villages. There is just too much corruption and not enough money to spend where it is needed in municipal infrastructure. I dread to think how many people have been further impoverished because their only beasts have been killed by eating plastic – or by walking into landmines. This holiday was my first experience of an “organised tour” and it was an entirely enjoyable experience. However strange things become important: At the end of a day of riding a pushbike, my top criteria for a first class hotel are: a pedestal toilet, running water – preferably warm – and a towel, closely followed by air conditioning – the outside temperature is still 32º and who cares about fresh air we’ve had that all day! The beds are wide, firm, and totally irresistible by 9pm. All the hotels we stayed in met these criteria – some better than others, but all were very acceptable. I think credit for the success of the tour must be given primarily to our guides – Eric, Adam and Rithie, and secondarily to the people who happened to be in this group, together with our Cambodian support team – Lucky and the boys who managed the bikes and drove the bus and the truck. Amazingly, we would all be more or less ready at the bikes at about 6.30am, all bags and extraneous gear on the bus, then helmeted and gloved and sun screened, water bottles full, still talking, talking, still taking photographs, we would be corralled by Eric and Adam to wait for Lucky’s signal to be off. Once on the road Lucky and the young guys would be ahead, with the rest of us strung out behind according to our respective capabilities, and/or desire to stop and take the odd photograph, or just stop for a breather! Adam and Eric monitored the ride and one or other would act as Sweeper (which is how I got to hear some of their good stories) – making sure no-one ever got lost or left too far behind. In the breaks, the truck would materialise, mats were put down to sit on, and deliciously cold fruit, biscuits and water would be available to resuscitate us all. If anyone needed a break from riding, all we had to do was ask one of the boys to load our bike onto the truck, and then get on the bus! The Cambodian boys were unfailingly helpful. I’m full of admiration for Eric and Adam who managed the whole thing without ever losing their cool. Full marks! |
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