Cambodia!

Finally one of my dreams has come true. For quite some time I have relished the thought of coming to Cambodia to see this beautiful country and experience most of the things it has to offer. I am sitting on a bed in a shared room at the Bamboo Bar and Guesthouse now and due to some unfortunate circumstances I have time to write this.
Before I get into Cambodia let me fill you in on the past few days:
As you know we were basically living on Koh Samet where the beaches were soft, the surf was relaxing and the idea most have of a “vacation” was at it's peak. All in all we ended up staying eight days and when you have no home or job it becomes too easy to say “just one more day”. I can see how eventually you might end up waiting for a wire transfer to get you home. The first time we intended to leave was postponed due to the island romance of one of our team members. This is awesome and absolutely understandable. “What's that? You wanna see your man one more night? I have to stay in paradise and avoid grueling heat and painful joints? Damn you! Alright fine you twisted my arm.” I think I speak for everyone of our team when I say go for it. Who could resist the temptation and charm of a tropical coast love-at-first-sight fire dancing/throwing beach boy? [unless of course you're straight (island girls don't really exist here, or throw fire) or have an amazingly beautiful woman waiting for you in Korea].
The second time we were postponed however doesn't have quite as much flare and novel allure to it. You see friends, I was the cause of this postponement. Did I fall in love with an island man? No. Did I need an extra day to get my open water certification? No. Did I just need more beach? Sadly, No. The cause of the situation was the onslaught of an intense fever and severe gastro-intestinal issues. Anderson likes to use more childish and colourful descriptions of my condition but for your honorable eyes and ears I will be polite and short. My issue left me wrenching in sweat and pain in what may very well be the worst location for such a problem on the planet. Let me describe our luxurious bungalow for you all. After a short walk up a hill from the beach, as you pass 1600 baht per night grand air conditioned honeymoon bungalows you come upon what is best described as a wrecking yard. Here lay the last few yet-to-be-demolished budget backpacker bungalows. As witnessed all over the place wherever I go and whatever I research, our world is quickly changing into a pretty polished luxury condo-esque environment. Out with the old and in with the new, seen here as smash down the dirty hippy houses and throw up some yuppie digs.
However, that is another issue altogether. Where was I... ok, here we go. Past the richies, behind the stumps, parallel to the trash/fire pit and in front of a few of the remaining gems is where we laid our heads for a week. A two room (bed/washroom) blueish bungalow sitting halfway up a hill on six-foot stilts with a pair of ultra chique and stylish white plastic patio chairs on the porch. Inside our home was a single king sized bed, a cold-water shower and a just add water toilet. We were however, for better or worse, granted the ultimate in psychedelic murals. A chap who goes by the pen name Enrico had what I can only imagine was way too much LSD and access to paint or crayons of some sort. The result was a wallpaper effect of multi-coloured palm filled beaches and flower filled prairies with roaring suns and bursting stars. Oh, we also had a fan.

I may be painting my own one-sided pessimistic image here but in defense I am still suffering from this unknown illness and am not the cheeriest of men at the moment. In defense of the bungalow, it only cost me 100 baht a night (300/3) and until those last two days served as solely a slightly more comfortable resting place than the beach. In hindsight puking my entrails into the ocean may have been more enjoyable. Let's hope I don't have to find out.
The next day I declared that we would promptly remove ourselves from Koh Samet before all my loving memories were replaced by fever-induced hallucinations.
We rode to the pier, bid adieu to Momma Dog and headed back to Ban Phe (Mainland).
I forgot to mention we had made a close friend while on Samet. A slightly mangy dog we dubbed Momma Dog. We found out later we had been calling her Dog Dog Dog in Thai, as 'ma' can be translated to 'dog'. So Momma dog seemed to have fallen in love with us, despite the fact that we literally fed her nothing but our own love. I will admit at times I was put off by her obvious fleas but thanks to the teachings of a special girl I quickly proceeded to love her and even go so far as to dance with her at the disco. Itch*itch*.

From the pier in Ban Phe we biked 61.5 km's to the nowhere intersection of Na Yai Am. Here we were directed roughly 5km to a remote motel where I paid the premium price of 400 baht for my own room to deal with my sickness alone and try to collect myself. The whole day was spent in the shadow of an ever present thunder head which came to a semi climax on our lunch break and finally an electrifying climactic display of sheer power later that night. This I can say was a way better form of entertainment than the 6 channels of Thai screaming TV that made Korean television look like HBO.

We awoke at the semi-early hour of 8:30-9, packed up and pedaled off into what would turn out to be our furthest day of biking yet, 90kms. This brought us to the welcoming almost border town of Pong Nam Ron. The last 7kms of this trip took us a painful, sweat soaked hour to climb the biggest bitch of an incline we have met so far. There were times when I cursed the very soul of the universe for creating a group of individuals crazy and stupid enough to decide to bike through South East Asia. We weren't even in the really hilly part yet. We were all feeling the burn when we rolled in at nightfall but luckily we ran into a British man who lived not too far away with his Thai wife. They told us where a small set of bungalows were where we could stay for the night and then came along to dinner with us. I learned a few things from him, my take on the conversation was punctuated by quick visits back to the room for obvious reasons though from all he said I will remember this loosely quoted recounting the most:

British Dude- “Yeah they snatched one of ours (dog) a while ago. Got him at night”
Mixed collection of inquisitive travelers- “Who snatched him?”
BD- “Bloody Cambodian fruit pickers”
MCIT- “They took your dog? For what?”
BD- “For what? To eat!”
MCIT- “Holy shit! Really?”

BD- “Yeah, now we got a Rottweiler ;)”

We dragged ourselves, sore knees and thighs alike back to the pavement Tuesday morning for the journey to the Cambodian border. We had high spirits as we were told several times that the border crossing was a mere 5 to 10 kms away. That's child's play to us right? As it turns out Thai's sense of distance is as lax as their sense of time. Our 5-10 km border trip turned out to be roughly 25 kilometers. Add to that the extra 6 we tacked on by missing the CLEARLY stated side road we were supposed to take. By clearly I mean as clear to you as: gfalduwjkbakdjgal. Plus an additional 2 more by me. I had the genius idea to overcome a hill by sneakily holding on to the back of a farmers wagon and hitching a ride, only to be eagerly informed by two girls on a scooter through hand signs that I had forgotten something involving a stamp and a shaking finger behind me. I took this to mean I was already in Cambodia and the security was so light or I was biking so fast that I had evaded the visa line. This turned out to be false. In reality we had just gone way too far. We passed through customs and immigration pretty quickly and once passed the security arm there was no doubt we were in Cambodia. The smooth rural roads of Thailand that would beat out Durhams any day had turned to dirt and rock quicker than you can say 'dammit'.

We rode the weaving paths passed banana trees and some of the most intense farming I have seen yet. Word of the two wheeled whitey retarded enough to bike here spread like wildfire. Whole families rushed out to watch the parade like suburbanites in Santa season. A high pitched “Hello! Buh Bye!” met us at nearly every hut we passed. As the sky darkened and forks of lightening pierced the ominous sky above we snailed by a sign reminiscent of an Oasis in the desert: Bamboo Bar & Guesthouse. This guesthouse is clean and relatively cheap, we are located just out side the town of Pailin, Cambodia. For anyone who knows anything about Cambodia and the terrors that occurred here, you might recall the news 2 years ago where Brother Number 2, Brother Number 3 as well as the Head of State of the Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot was Brother Number 1) were arrested for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The location of the arrest? Pailin.

Tonight I am avoiding the industrial strength “traveler pills” my loving mother bestowed upon me to get a feel for where this illness is heading. Tomorrow morning we set out for Battambang, another grueling 80ish kms away.

Written August 19^th 2009.

We pounded out the 85 km's today in the scorching heat. When we left in the morning there was not a cloud in the sky and my left side is a burning collection of flesh right now despite the re-application of sunscreen every hour. The roads here are a pain in the ass but the riding was more or less flat. With more pot holes and rocks than a gravel pit the riding was bumpy and uncomfortable at best, butt-busting and chode chaffing at worse. The amount of dust and dirt the passing trucks would kick up was enough to choke a mule but between the passing traffic was the countryside. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous with fields upon fields running along the rolling hills, mountainous jungle spotted with random collections of inhabitants, eager as always to wave and scream hello. "The last long jaunt before Battambang"

We have touched down for the night at the Spring Park Hotel which is very cheap and quite nice. We'll be staying in Battambang for a few days to recoup and do some sight seeing, I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. Miss you all, Much love,
Blaise