The end of Laos and 22 days across the flooded rice paddies of Cambodia

Today, 3 December, we take a day off to update the blog with our last days in Laos and our journey through Cambodia - finally! We are already halfway through Vietnam, but have had endless problems accessing the blog for the Vietnamese government's strict controls on internet access - a losing battle.

Archives:
For viewing the pics of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand - go click on the archives - the pics are stored by month from June through to November.

Laos and Cambodia: Vital stats
At the end of Laos we've clocked up 7000km and so far have enjoyed great health (apart from two bouts of travellers gippo guts) and very few mechanical hassles with our bikes (having suffered only 12 punctures, a snapped pannier frame, one broken gear shifter, a loose crank and one squeaky pedal). Our hair has grown four inches and our bodies have grown accustomed to 6 - 10 hours in the saddle every day; and despite having spent in excess of three thousand uninterrupted hours together we still enjoy each other's company!

Coming to the end of Laos:
In early October we arrive at the southern border of Laos, where the Mekong swirls and divides to form the famous 'Thousand Islands'. We take a longtail boat to Don Det Island and rest for three glorious days...

We fish off our breezy balcony, dozing off in swaying hammocks...













and by candlelight dine on Mekong Fish steamed in Banana leaf,











and river raft,













humbled by the swift, quiet power of the Mighty Mekong in flood,













and watch the sunset, drinking quarts of ice-cold beer Lao (our favourite brand so far),











our hosts the lovely Mr and Madam Phin who adopt us, doing their utmost to make us feel at home, from installing a bedlight for reading in our bamboo shanty to cooking us exotic Cao Lac and even brewing us litres and litres of Lipton tea - gentle, humble people...

But, the road to Cambodia beckons. We bid our kind hosts goodbye, pack our bikes and boat it back to the main road from where we left for our three-day holiday, making certain not to gain a single kilometer by means of transport other than our bikes - for that would be considered gross and unforgivable cheating!

The border post between Laos and Cambodia
We pay a small bribe on exiting Laos, but to our surprise and despite other travellers' warnings, get off bribe-free on the Cambodia side of the border. Instead the border officials smile and teach us a few words of Khmer.

Welcome to Cambodia! A drastic change from Laos for the conspicuous absence of rice paddies and a sudden abundance of wild birds (on our first day we spot malachite-winged kingfishers, two owls, an eagle and flocks of little brown jobs). It becomes clear to us that the welcome flourish of wilderness is mostly a by-product of the ever-present threat of unexploded landmines, which keeps both the farmers and boys with ketties at bay. No running off into the bushes for us when nature calls!

Cambodian Delights - rural fruitstands and whole fresh coconuts to quench our thirst under the Killer Cambodian sun - the temperature hovering at a scorching 35 - 38 degrees celsius.

The rural Cambodian roads...
Gill battling the mud on the road to Siam Reap.


And the road gets worse ...
and worse as the water reclaims more and more of the land...
Plodding our way along small, muddy backroads and through unmapped villages, hunting for detours around the flooded main road.

And finally the water wins, forcing us to take a makeshift ferry for 8km across the flat floodplains.
Six foot beneath us the road to Siam Reap... but it still feels like cheating.

Jingle-jingle-klippety-klop...the fairground-happy sound of pony carts on the dirt roads, the proud ponies sporting cocky head-dresses and collars of shiny bells.

Forest children swimming in a rain puddle - way out there off the beaten track...

More Cambodian than this you can't get: endless, shocking-green rice paddies dotted with slender sugar palms. The landscape was so flat that our wheels seemed to turn by themselves - especially after the mountains of Laos.

The reason why we prefer butt-sore biking to taking the bus. In one day we saw three overturned vehicles - a logical outcome of the Cambodian approach to driving: Hoot and Hope, but NEVER, EVER slow down!

The temples of Angkor outside Siam Reap blew our minds. On scale and beauty the ancient Khmer ruins rivalled even the Egyptian Pyramids of Giza. We spent three days in Siam Reap, cycling the vast expanses of the Angkor ruins from dusk till dawn, getting 'templed-out'.

To cope with the sheer scale of Angkor we adopted favourites:
In 3rd place: the 269 giant stony faces of Byron temple staring down at us - freaky...
In 2nd place: Impish carvings in a flooded moat, blisfully deserted from busloads of tourgroups...

and the favourite: Indiana Jones/ Tomb Raider temples - where gaint trees spectacularly reclaim the moss-covered ruins.

On a motorbike tour of Battambang, sampling potent rice wine and fruit and getting tipsy with our guide, the forty-five year old Mr Hinn Hoa. He survived the Khmer Rouge regime, but lost his parents, most of his extended family and their family farm. Full of vengeance, he joined the Vietnamese army and remained in the military for another 15 years after the war.
"But I left because we earned only $30 a month..." he says. As one of Battambang's best guides his monthly income now nudges US$150.

The ingenious bamboo trains of Battambang - these one-carriage 'trains' are assembled in less than 30 seconds from a bamboo platform balanced precariously on steel wheels scavenged from abandoned army tanks. The whole contraption is driven along the twisted and poorly maintained railway track by means of a simple diesel engine. Whenever two bamboo trains hurtle towards each other on deadly collision course, the drivers play a version of 'ching-chong-cha' or 'scissors, paper, rock' to determine who has to dismount from the track to make way. The rickety trains reach speeds of up to a hair-raising 100km/h.

Battambang's version of Super Man:
According to legend Prince Battambang was a humble cook until one day when he stirred a pot of cooking rice with a length of firewood. To his horror the rice turned black. Fearing the villagers' wrath he gobbled up the entire fouled batch, and no sooner his skin turned blacker than night and his body grew strong and powerful, endowed with supernatural strength. Upon hearing his tale the villagers crowned him as prince to rule over and protect Battambang. We missed the moral of the story, but loved the giant black statue, which reminded us of Africa - home, sweet home.

Hanging on for dear life:
Monsoon rains flooded the road south towards Battambang, forcing us to take the grossly overloaded ferry across Lake Tonle Sap.

The Tonle Sap River joins the mighty Mekong in Phnom Penh. Each year, as the seasons shift from wet to dry and the Mekong's levels fluctuate dramatically, the Tonle Sap's flow reverses direction. The receding waters leave behind a concentration of thousands of trapped fish and a fertile bed of river sand (like the banks of the Nile) for cultivation of peanuts, vegetables and other summer crops.

Peaceful on the surface...
A view of Boeng Kak Lake from our guesthouse balcony, outside roaring, mad Phnom Penh traffic.
Cambodia's economic progress suggests a country heading in the right direction. But corruption is equally flourishing, threatening the peace, like a latent fever. While having beers on Phnom Penh's elegant Mekong riverfront, a resident friend of ours remarked: "In Cambodia it can happen any time. I don't know what it is, but it can happen anytime."

Cambodian Cuisine: golden-fried snakes and crispy tarantulas on skewers – amazing what influence the war-driven famine had on the starving nation's palate. We weren't that hungry…

The Killing Fields:
We visited the spine-chilling Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, which brought back the ghastly realities of Cambodia's bloody history. We stood silent before 8000 skulls of people that died during Pol Pot's reign. Between 1970 and 1978 three million Cambodians were killed in the senseless madness of a civil war that imploded on itself.

Landmines still litter the country, leaving vast areas unusable and unpopulated. It will cost Cambodia the equivalent of its entire annual GDP for the next seven years to clean up the deadly mess. We were warned NEVER, EVER to leave the road unless on well-used paths. The many amputees served as a constant reminder, as did a fellow traveller's story of watching a grazing water buffalo being blown to pieces.

An ex-soldier, a colonel - he fought alongside Cambodian government soldiers to drive back Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge. Over dinner he showed us his war wounds, proud to have fought on the 'winning side'. He thumbed his schrapnelled calf and my copy of "Surviving the Killing Fields", a glimmer of recollection in his eye.

The beach at Sihanoukville where we rested for three days, bringing our trip through Cambodia to a satisfying end: dining on the beach and snorkelling and lazing in the sun drinking mango and pineapple fruitshakes. Shoals of orange fishies made up for the the fact that the reefs showed the scars of dynamite fishing. Environmental consciousness and animal welfare has a long way to go in SE Asia.