We planned to ride a few more days to Phnom Penh and then pack up the bikes, so we headed in a roughly northerly direction and our faith in Lord Google was shaken…
It turns out that the all-seeing eye has less interest in Cambodia than in Vietnam and, in our usual highway-avoidance fashion, trusted the route that appeared to cross a large wetland area, which it appeared to do on a raised causeway across the mangroves. We rode through the most remote backwaters we had seen anywhere, passing between very shabby shacks whose residents lived on catching fish with their hands, up to their necks in the brown swamps, which were collected by boats that took them to the town across the wetlands. When the track disappeared into the water it became obvious that these remote communities lived at the end of a tendril of civilization and there was no way to go forward. We had the brainwave of trying to get someone to load all our stuff on one of their canoes to go the last few Kms, but on trying to communicate this to one of them it became clear that he was a drunken wildman, so we turned tail and retraced our route. After 35km of tiny tracks, we were 5km from our starting point!!
So we headed north to a market town on the map hoping for some kind of accommodation, which we found in the form of the most disgusting guesthouse we had seen anywhere. The sun was low in the sky, but we were only 15km from the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Aran had had the saddle up his bum since sunrise, so could he really be expected to ride some more? “Kilometres to me,” he replied when asked, “are like logs in a fire. You put them in and they burn up by themselves!” We then cycled the last leg of our trip with a giant wobbly red sun on the horizon into the city where we found relatively pleasant lodgings!
National Museum of Cambodia
We were to fly out of the city just over a week later after spending some time with our long-time ozzy friends. The bikes got packed into their boxes, left at a guesthouse and we spent a couple of days in the capital doing the few touristy things on offer, including the harrowing genocide museum housed in a high-school-turned-torture-prison.
Aran finds a barbers in Phnom Penh
S21 genocide museum. An eerie glimpse into the past that seems close to forgotten by most of us
It was great to see the Ozzies climb awkardly (their oldest son, aged 14 is now 6’3″) out of their tuktuk late at night and begin the last bit of our trip, without our trusty bikes…
The Flanagan Clan embark on their adventure
So now all 9 of us off to see some temples in Siem Reap.
