January 3, 2013

We couldn’t bring ourselves to wake up early enough to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. We had a leisurely breakfast instead and headed to the temples around 9am. Without Seyha’s guidance, we stuck to the main road.

A Japanese NGO team restoring Bayon set up an exhibit with all sorts of information and displays. The team is currently restoring the south library component of the Bayon complex, which should take 5 years. They are using mostly traditional methods, with the assistance of cranes and safety equipment. Originally, restoration methods relied on reinforced concrete and other “modern” technology to support the crumbling and sinking ruins. Now, the foundation is being restored using hand rammed sand to rebuild the core of the library foundation, which is then covered in laterite stone which protects the sand and provides structural strength. The laterite is overlaid with original carved sandstone mixed with sections of newly carved stone where the original stone was missing or destroyed.

Hand tools

Pulley system

Chandler the lion tamer

Sanctum sanctorum

Tree taking over

We spent part of the afternoon reading in a small, quiet area of a larger temple. Nobody but a guard walked through the area, and that was probably due to our bikes left out front. The area was covered in spider webs and had clearly not been visited much. The webs that the spiders made were fascinating. They made little tubes in the middle of their webs which they would crawl into when I came too close to them.

Tube spider

As we were leaving the temples, something darted across the road. Monkeys! They were being fed by someone with fruit, just hanging out and eating bugs off of each other.

They sit like people

Playboy monkey

I finally built up enough courage to do a fish pedicure. At first it felt like hundreds of little fingers tickling my feet, but after a few minutes it felt kind of nice. I took my feet out after 20 or so minutes and they felt very exfoliated. It was an fun experience, but I don’t think I would pay top dollar in the states to do it again.

Fish pedicure

January 2, 2013

We made arrangements to met up with Seyha, Henri, Isabelle and family at 6am to begin our bike tour of the Temples of Angkor. We were excited to be spending the day with other people. Also, Seyha knew routes to the temples that were off the main road.

Secret path

Faces of Bayon

Apsaras in ruins

While the incredible size of the temples is amazing, I found myself drawn more to the details of the carvings.

Garuda

Doorway

Bas-relief

The group we were with was a lot of fun. The kids range from 5 to 14 years old and have been riding around europe and asia on bikes for 8 months! Chandler and I were super impressed and definitely made us think about traveling as a family.

Kids goofing off

Haven't had a dam on here for a while, somewhere in the jungle

I think we did more walking than we have done the entire trip. We were both tired at the end of the long day. We decided to not join the group the next day, but spent the day exploring alone at a slower pace.

January 1, 2013

Happy New Year!

We spent New Years Day relaxing and wandering. Siem Reap is a town clearly catering to tourists. There are many western restaurants, bars and massage chairs lining the streets. The sales people are much more aggressive than anywhere else we have been so far.

We found a decent little restaurant for lunch. As we were finishing, the french family rides up. They had connected with a local named Seyha through warmshowers.org. Warmshowers is a site for cycling tourists to find hospitality through local people, similar to couchsurfing.org. They invited us over to their table while they had lunch. We all agreed to meet up in the morning to tour the temples together.

Sunset

Scarves for sale

Touristy

Khmer band

We spent a few hours strolling the main streets as the sun was setting. Things got even crazier with music blasting out of bars and the night market opening. We made it an early night as we were meeting Seyha and company at 6am the next morning.

December 31, 2012

We finally succeeded in starting early today, before the sun was up even. We didn’t have much hope for finding anywhere open to eat, but then we came across a bakery! A steady stream of customers on motos were buying large bags of baguettes presumably to sell on their own or use in their food stalls. We loaded up on pastries like muffins, sugar cane jelly filled scones and something similar to a cinnamon roll. We passed on the hard boiled egg, ham pizza croissants and hot dog baguettes though.

The morning started out windy and cold. For the first time since we got to Asia, I wanted a sweater. A strong headwind made the first 20 km very difficult, but did help warm us up.

At the crest of a small hill, we ran into the family of bike tourist again. They had spent the night at a temple in a small village when they couldn’t find lodging. Outside of the temple were stone carvers working on a variety of large stone statues. They used hand tools and electric tools. It was incredible to see them at work.

When we started up again, the wind had died down to a nice breeze. The road was flat and we were making good time. I was leading, focused on mileage, as we chipped away at our 100km day. We had so far to go, it was important to keep a stead continuous pace. At 50km into the ride, Chandler had to tell me stop because we were in a town and should eat something. So far today, we had passed very few places that appeared to have good food. One little village had about a dozen stalls all selling the same two things: little birds on sticks fried whole (legs, head and all) and piles of fried snakes, or salamanders or something…

With another 50km to go, the day was becoming much harder. We ended stopping every 10km for water or a snack. One thing that kept our minds off the distance we needed to cover were our encounters with waving, enthusiastic kids. My three favorite of the day: one naked little girl desperately running towards the road to shout hello, a little boy who yelled hello and then pulled a snake out of the mud puddle he was standing in to show us and a little boy who was squatting and pooping in a field while yelling hello at us.

We were so happy to finally make it to Siem Reap and checked into a hotel. Our total distance for the day was 66.5 miles. Our reward was pizza! Two pizzas actually. After such a long day, we even had a little energy to do a little exploring.

Pizza!

Chan and lion's rear

We didn’t make it to midnight though to celebrate new years with everyone else. Once we laid down in bed, it was over.

December 30, 2012

Since we opted not to boat across the Tonle Sap, we had to ride around via Sisophon, which is located at the intersection of Highway 5 and Highway 6.

Battambang

We stopped into the other vegetarian restaurant via a short tour of the city. We took a route along the river which was much more charming than the back road we had seen the night before. The east bank of the river was quite a bit cleaner and had more modern buildings, apparently the west side that we had stayed on was the old part of town. The restaurant was very busy with every table filled with local people and many people taking food to go. In appearance the place looked like any other busy restaurant including the big bowl of broth a lady was ladling into bowls of noodles, but in fact everything on the menu was vegetarian. Meat has been so prevalent in Thailand and Cambodia so far, it was a little shocking to see so many options and so many people eating here.

We had a little trouble getting out of town due to socializing again. It seems that every time we stop, someone has questions about the bikes, where we are going or have been. It hasn’t been hard meeting the locals. This time it was a 41 year old tuk tuk driver who was curious about our trip and told us about his sons and then a few minutes later we stopped and chatted with a young English teacher.

A number of exciting things happened today. First, we discovered sugar cane juice. It is incredible. The juice is squeezed out of peeled sugar cane which is hand fed through a gas powered roller press. The juice is then poured into a glass mug (or a plastic bag to go) filled with ice. The first sips were OK, but once it cooled down with the ice, the slightly sweet taste emerged. It is a very cool and refreshing drink. The stands which dot the roadside are easily identified by a bucket full of peeled sugar cane. In Khmer the drink is called something like “tuk am pow” which means the water of the sugar cane.

Making sugar cane juice

The second exciting thing was that we not only saw but spoke to other cycling tourists! Chan spotted a bike with panniers parked on the side of the road and slammed on the brakes. The bike belonged to a Frenchman who was cycling with his wife and 4(!) kids around Europe and Asia. They had been on the road for 8 months and were headed to Siem Reap like us. We exchanged contact info and made plans for them to host us in France when we get there next summer. It was great to stop and chat, even briefly with some other bike tourists.

I also got a souvenir today. The krama is a traditional Khmer garment that has a hundred and one uses. Scarf, bandanna, sling, child carrier, skirt, etc. While biking through a small village, I noticed a man with several different colors of krama fabric loaded on the back of his bike. I selected a purple checked pattern and he measured off about a meter of fabric, cut it off and handed it over.

Krama seller

We made it to Sisophon pretty early in the day and found a very nice hotel for $13. It had just opened, and we may have been the first people to stay in our room. The transaction for the room was pretty amusing: the room price was quoted in US Dollars, Chan paid with Thai Baht and received Cambodia Riel as change. We had read that Baht is readily accepted in western Cambodia, but we found that about half the time people didn’t know the exchange rate and didn’t really want to take it. We changed the rest of our Baht to Dollars at a private money changer for a rate only about 2% worse than the true exchange rate.

Sisophon was a decidedly non-tourist town. There were lots of bars, but we had a bit of trouble finding somewhere to eat. We finally found a place with pictures of noodles and egg on their sign and sat down. After some miming with the guy next to us we figured out we had to put our order in with the cook, and they would bring our food to us. Our smiles were met with the cook’s uneasy large eyes and it became clear that there was no menu, and no English (and clearly no Khmer on our ignorant end). Luckily I had taken a photo of the menu at our guest house in Pailin which was in both Khmer and English. I pulled out the camera which caused much confusion, and then laugher as we pointed to what we wanted on someone else’s menu- it worked perfectly and we had a very nice dinner. We watched some Thai PBS back at the hotel and got to bed early in preparation for our long ride tomorrow to Siem Reap.

Fried rice with vegetables, please