Into Vietnam

Hey everybody, another update on where I am and what we're up to.

The time we spent in Kep was great! We chilled out at Botanica Bungalows for a few days of rest and relaxation (minus the bugs). This place is lacated quite a few kilometers away from the actual town of Kep but thanks to our bikes it's not much of a problem. Our bungalows were situated in a lush garden of tropical flowers and plants, along with which came an abundance of wild creatures and insects.

While almost the sleepiest town I've ever been to, Kep holds some breath-taking scenery and amazing ocean / sunset views. The most memorable thing about this place however was the food. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else I have been before. The specialty here is the crab, and when coupled with Kampot fresh green pepper I'm not sure there's much that compares.



For $5 US I got 4 crabs, steamed rice and the best dish I've had in a long time. The owner of our bungalows, Stefaan, is a great Belgium dude who makes some killer shots (just ask Luke) and has a deep love and knowledge of Cambodia. It was great to pick his brain for advice and many stories of his time in this amazing country. On the last night here, while on our way to enjoy some stew prepared by one of the most hilarious Hungarian men I've ever met, at the only Hungarian restaurant in Cambodia, my bicycle decided to junk out on me. My derailleur cable housing had worn down and popped through the top tube bracket, leaving me stuck in the toughest 8th gear. Lacking the proper tools and any repair shop, I was stuck with an extra hard workout.

When it came time to leave, Luke had come down with some health issues but fought them off long enough to bid adieu to the last place we'd stay in Cambodia. We had to back track a bit to return to the highway and made the 40ish km ride to our turnoff in somewhat decent time.

As I turned off the main Hwy, I was embarking not only on the last leg of our Cambodia saga, but onto one of the most tiring, stressful and muddy roads I have ever biked on.

I say road because I have seen muddier areas before. The 4x4 destination close to my house lovingly called “The Pits” is such a place. Here, people like to show how hardcore their vehicles as well as themselves are when placed in front of a watery hole filled with mud. It's considered leisure time and is a hell of a lot of fun.

This road however was intended as a way of passage from Cambodia to Viet Nam. Until last year it has been reserved for locals. Assuming, most rightfully so, that no one else in their right mind would/could want to use this border crossing. However for bikers who have a time schedule to keep we were grateful that it had been opened for foreigners as well. The following is my own account of the road.

The Road

Driving along in a vehicle the turnoff would have come and gone without a second glance lest you'd traveled it before. A stone sign with the graceful Khmer language was the only marker to indicate that is cowpath was indeed the way to Viet Nam. One look down the 'road' left you imagining how many of the 28 kilometers to the border would be in this condition before it improved. Surely it couldn't be ALL like this.

As my bike decided to stay in the 8th gear, I was the first to start off. In hindsight the beginning really wasn't that bad, the trademark red Cambodian dirt was bumpy, worn ragged by the recent weather and pock-marked by more than enough pot-holes filled with a redish brown liquid. The going was not so bad, save for the bumps that threatened each time to eject my packs from my rack and leave me frustrated with a muddy mess. As I pedaled on, the road grew increasingly worse with areas of pure water for dozens of meters straight. So thick and murky you hoped you'd chosen the best line to avoid any potential holes which could measure from 1-2 feet deep in places. My legs pushed on as I avoided each ridge and crevasse to lighten the impact on my packs. As the water thinned the road turned to a potters clay, which clung to the wheels like beggars to hesitant tourists. Within seconds my brakes had gunked up and left me wishing for the cleansing mud/waters before. My legs strained under the task of maintaining progress

through this bog of eternal mud. The moto's whose rep it is to fly by with a waning honk were often going the same speed even with their many inches of travel on their suspension. I weaved in and out, around, forward and backward to find the highest, smoothest, driest track. The gear issue with my bicycle left me sweating profusely in the afternoon sun, as I cursed Merida for their shoddy derailleur cable housings. The children which scattered the sides of the road were ceaseless in their calls of 'hello' and 'what's your name?'. Calls which once filled me with glee were now permeating my eardrums with effects worse than an angered swarm of yellow jackets.

I loathed their screaming and shouting but felt terrible for not responding. As if somehow in some way I was being a terrible ambassador for my country and company.

My patience grew so thin with the conditions and noises I found no solace in my MP3 player, it served only to increase the pressure in my head. As the road dried slightly a group of people 15 feet away joined together in their greeting to me, and in my weakness I called back. Upon this recall they let loose the tether on their dog. A putrid animal not 2 feet tall took off after me with an unexpected speed. I kicked out to the creature whose snout housed a set of gleaming white teeth. How its canines could contrast so powerfully against the molten earth while it's owners hung rotten and black, I'll never know. A swift kick caught it haphazardly in the ear but only served to feed it's hunger for me. My evasion was swift as the adrenaline surged through my legs, now even more slender though muscular then before. (My upper body seems to be wasting away though). My escape seemed doomed by the ruts and holes in the ground that forced my packs to choose this instant to pop off my iron rack. The loss of my left pack went unnoticed as I attempted to avoid the jaws of this infernal beast. Though due to the fashion in which I attached my extra pack to the top, my Otlieb hung with me and caused my backpack's strap to tear lose and drag behind me. At this point I had had enough of this flea ridden bastard dog and let fall my bicycle. As I turned, the most basic of instinct within this dog must have alerted to the fact that I was hell-bent on blood. I was seeing only red, my ears the only other sense registering as they delivered to me the sounds of laughter coming from the beasts owners. This act of war only fed my hatred for this four-legged creature. It knew what I was, and what I so earnestly was after. I was going to depart this animal from this earth and I was going to enjoy it. I turned on the animal and drew back my leg which held enough anger and power to send it's scruffy white head 50 yards into the rice paddy. As I did so, his survival skills seemed to send the message to his legs. He turned and high tailed it back to his owners before I could make any attempt at hate-filled revenge. The mud was ceaseless in its venture to slow my progress.



Vietnam couldn't be close enough and Cambodia could keep it's shit roads for all I cared. I wanted the crimson star studded canvas to pierce to too-blue sky. I wanted a grim-faced border guard to stamp my passport as I gratefully marched into the country I had seen more movies about then ever read books. A capitalist country masquerading as socialist country or not, I didn't care. I just wanted paved roads.

After what seemed like an eternity of cussing the earth and rain, the crisscrossing of vehicles and the well intentioned but loathed air horns of passing trucks, two flags dotted the sky. One a red/blue backed Angkor, the other a sheet of scarlet with one awaiting golden star.

Caked with mud, blistered from the sun and tired from the journey I rolled to the front of the border guards building. My trek here seemed enough, though I was not even close yet to the welcomed spray of a shower head, or the well deserved scoop of a soup spoon to my mouth.

The process through the border was a joke. A joke which was delivered with mimed gestures and three words: Passport, Sit, and Down. I believe wholeheartedly that our arrival at the Vietnamese gate was a surprise. That the border control guard had been raised from a deep slumber to come and approve our entrance which would account for his irritated behaviour. After a 40 min wait we were waved through and were, for the first time in our lives, in Vietnam. The road that will someday (not now), be a laughable memory, turned as quickly into hard top as it had to mud.

I should note here that once my mud-bogging debacle was finished my love for Cambodia returned and I no longer hate the childish greetings and red dirt roads.

We biked through the border town the 10 or so km's to Ha Tien, where we would sleep for the night.

After washing our legs and arms and getting the necessary liquids into us, we headed out to a good dinner of fried shrimp and fried rice, where we would toast to the 5th anniversary of Anderson and Liz, take a stroll around the town and then head back to out hotel.

We left the next morning for the pier where we caught a slow local boat across the waters to Phu Quoc Island, where we would enjoy a beach paradise for a few days and plan out the next leg of our trip. As I write this I am sitting in a towel on a beach chair with the ocean air blowing through my hair. The sound of the surf, hard and rough today, bashing into the foreground. The sun is setting and I am content. I have a beer and peace of mind. Tomorrow we will leave this island retreat and head out to our next adventure through the Mekong Delta toward Ho Chi Min City, or Saigon as it is still referred to here. Until next time, keep on keepin' on.

Ät the Royal Palace"

FINALLY!
I apologize for the terribly long time that's gone by since my last blog. It's just so hard to get an opportunity to write. I think we had just arrived in Battambang, which was a cool city with some interesting things to do and see. We took a day trip bike loop outside the city to see local sights that we read or heard about. The first place was an abandoned Pepsi bottling plant dating back to the 60's. Here I would like to note that hearing about something that may or may not exist is significantly easier to do than actually finding these places. Such was the case with a crocodile farm for which the tourist directions read: “Drive 700 meters past the 1.2km mark and turn left. Some ways further down the road there is a sign-less house behind which is the crocodile farm.” The whole road held side streets every 20 feet with absolutely no signs of any kind. Our team deserves some credit here because after some ridiculous croc charades and hilarious mis-communications we were relatively quick at finding the farm. We had some great views from atop foot ½ wide cement walls/walkways whose guardrails, when in existence were rusted right out.

"Hungry croc"


We continued onto our first Ancient temple of Cambodia, Wat Ek Phnom. The temple, we were implicitly informed by our 8 year old guides, was older than the famous Angkor Wat. It was an amazing ruin and still remains one of my favorites. The lack of tourism here made for a rule-free exploration of the grounds.

In Battambang we met an incredibly nice man by the name of Tea. Tea was a tuk tuk driver who used to teach and volunteer at an orphanage in town. We met him while we were getting boat tickets and he invited us to dine with his family at his house after we had finished our day. Tea lived with several relatives including his wife, children, in-laws and a few siblings.
"Tea's niece"

The food they served was delicious and the hours of talking with him and playing with the children was very eye-opening and was tones of fun. All the kilometers we've biked past thousands and thousands of homes, huts and hangouts left us with a perfect insight into the
exterior of these places, but Tea really showed us what it was like to live inside. The living conditions for these families places so much importance on peaceful and productive co-habitation. Placed into a bamboo or plywood hut measuring maybe 25feet deep and 15feet wide, housing up to 10 or more people is a nightmare for me. Yet these people are jovial, caring and as witnessed, eager to share and offer to us outsiders what little they had.

From Battambang we boarded a boat to Siem Reap. The boat ride was marketed as a scenic trip through rural river villages and a beautiful bird sanctuary. The scenery was good and the villagers, when not being tossed over the sides of their small boats by the wake of ours, were ever-waving and welcoming as always. What the ad didn't say was that you would be unable to hear anything over the roar of the engine and that 1/3 of the trip would be spend with the shades drawn as we bashed our way through overgrown water channels. This took about 7 or 8 hours, and as far as the bird sanctuary, I'll never know.

Siem Reap was great, so great in fact we stayed there for 11 days. 7 days of this was spent biking to and from the Ancient Ruins of Angkor. We bought the 7 day non-consecutive pass which would allow us to go at our own pace and see all that we wanted to see in the time we wanted to see it. As some of our temples were 30 kms outside the city we took some time riding to and from sights, but tried to make the most of days. If you were to have been wandering around the beautiful visibly French influenced city of Siem Reap throughout our stay you could find us on our wheels anywhere from the East temples of Bakong, Roluos and Beng Mealea to the pristine northern beauty of Banteay Srei and Kbal Spean. Of course making time for the 3-day crowd favs like Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm and Bayon.







The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of the foundation blocks, which stand steady and strong. Unmoving for thousands of years, they hold up some of the most intricate carved stone of the lotus towers of Angkor Wat to the faces of Bayon. Each temple held it's own allure and intrigue that served to draw you nearer or push you further to get just the right personal perspective. It's true that hours upon days upon weeks could be spent wandering these temple structures to only make the slightest dent in the understanding and appreciation for these absolutely incredible creations in devotion to gods.


When not playing Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones around the jungles of Siem Reap we were hanging out at our guesthouse having a beer or two, eating some great home made Khmer food (a bone-filled snake dish awaited us one evening) or we were watching the intensity of the nightly electric storms, lighting the sky with insurmountable power.
We took several local shop trips throughout our stay, including the photo studio for some new passport pics, the Rajana bombshell-to-bracelet store, and the best bicycle repair shop I could find.









"Gotta rep. the sponsors"

You see I took a liking to silly little bike tricks and ended up bending my derailleur hanger while eating it over my handlebars^^. The bike shop guys had never seen any hardware like that on my bike but did their best to fix the fact that my derailleur was indexing like a dyslexic accountant. I left them with it only to return to find it nearly in the same condition as I had left it, except that now I had one more gear. Alas, I had to stick to only 4 rear gears from then until Phnom Pehn, which turned out to be a total walk in the park. Maybe we should call it a drive in the park, we jumped the 6-hour bus to Phnom Pehn which would save us 5 days of biking. My friends there is just too much to do in Cambodia and not enough time on our visas, so with the knowledge that we had to get from Phnom Pehn to Vietnam in 12 days (with some sight seeing in between) we opted to save ourselves the time and gain the experience.

Phnom Pehn, the capital city of Cambodia was in fact a real city. It held the occasional street light and the obligatory hundreds of tuk-tuk drivers peddling rides, girls and drugs of every kind. If you're planning on travelling to South East Asia you will quickly adopt the invisible headphones. This is how I eventually ended up acting for the majority of time spend leaving our guesthouse or passing by hoards of pestering tuk tuk drivers. Just keep walking, don't make eye contact. You can offer the occasional “Sorry, no thank you” if you're feeling incapable of ice cold indifference, but don't be surprised if the first syllable out of your mouth causes them to wheel around and shout several packaged inquiries toward you. Here are a few of my favorites: “Hey where you go!?” “Tuk Tuk for you sir? You don't want to ride that bike, bike bad” “No bike, you change”, “You want the skunk man?” “Skunk? Ganja? Cocaine? MDMA? Yabba?” “BOOM BOOM! You want boom boom man? Girls? Guys? No problem for you my friend!”. These are just a few that I would hear dozens or more times a day.

In Phnom Pehn, there are several things to do to pass the time. Though be prepared to feel like a storm cloud is magnetized over your head as you delve deep into the horrors and atrocities that have plagued Khmer people for decades. During the time of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1978ish), Saloth Sar (you may know him as Pol Pot) unleashed a killing spree dubbed a revolution which ended in nearly ¼ of the population being decimated. If you don't know what I'm talking about PLEASE ask me next time you see me, or go ahead and wikipedia the Khmer Rouge or even Pol Pot to get an idea. These dirty psychotic bastards committed acts that can over shadow Hitler anyday.In the wake of this black stain in Khmer history the people have not forgotten, erecting monuments to honour the millions dead and preserving the places of unjust detainment and torture for everyone to see and to reflect so that something like this never happens again. The Killing Fields was our first stop, this is exactly what the name suggests. A site with several mass graves where people were sent to die. Nothing as organized as Auswitch or Dachau, the Khmer Rouge soldiers, often young children, would use anything they could find to do the murdering. Farm hoes, clubs, iron rods and machetes were the usual instruments of death but bullets were occasionally used as well as the natural environment.

"The Killing Tree"

We toured the grounds and bore witness to children's graves, women graves, headless graves and unknown graves. It is not beyond a sharp eye to see splintered bones and teeth strewn about which only serves to remind how recently this occurred.

The skulls of 8985 people, many blindfolded, were found here and are held in a memorial stupa to be observed.The next stop was the Grand Palace, which was undoubtedly beautiful. The royal grounds held many architecturally astounding building and several religious pieces like the silver pagoda which we were allowed to see but not photograph. This was a lull in the moral anguish trip, perhaps to give us a break before we ventured to S-21.

"Security Regulations of S-21"

S-21, which is also called Tuol Sleng Museum was a highschool before 1975. It was taken over by Pol Pots security forces and turned into a prison known as 'Security Prison 21' or, S-21. It was the largest detention and torture center in the country and where most of the bodies from the Killing Fields originated.The school turned prison turned museum is a harrowing experience where I felt many emotions. None of which were very pleasant. Left almost the same as it was found, if you didn't know what it was you might still think it was a highschool covered in barbed and razor wire. Upon entering any of the buildings though you would quickly come to realize that this place in space and time has been forever scarred with death and the most unfathomable evil that humans are capable of. The interrogation rooms still hold the torture devices and shackles, the pictures of thousands of detainees are on display some before and after torture, all of which were subsequently murdered. The cells are a ramshackle hodgepodge of poor masonry and little light. The floor holds remnants of the blood spilled not so long ago and the play area outside is home to the tombs of the last people to be found at the prison when the Vietnamese took control. It was the last stop on our near speechless tour of the day.

The rest of the time in Phnom Pehn was spent browsing the many markets in search of the perfect gift, waiting at the Vietnamese Embassy to get our visas and finding the most modern of bike shops to see if I could REALLY get my bike fixed (I did and it was awesome).We pedaled away from Phnom Pehn with the small distance of 50kms to cover before we took refuge in Kirirom National Wildlife Park. We wiggled and bartered our way into a many star resort after finding out that our intentions of tenting it was impossible. Kirirom Hillside Resort was most definitely a place where affluent Khmers took some time away from the city, it was a forest getaway complete with glorious pool and sauna, comfy rooms (really comfy after all five of us jammed ourselves inside), a small zoo, kayak's and a zip line. The zip line was the #1 thing I wanted to do, but I can't say I was THAT surprised when it was 4 sizes too small to fit my huge muscular Canadian legs and core. Alas, Anderson and I had to take the fat-man walk of shame back down, burdened with the towels and water-bottles of our more slender companions.

We also took a 17 kilometer hellish, god-awful life-hating, bike-cursing trek to the top of the mountain, which stood only 700 meters above sea level. Along the way we stopped at a Buddhist temple as well as a local waterfall where took a breather for awhile.

"Liz and I at the waterfall"

Each painful quad burning pedal up was worth it when it came time to descend. I have never gone this fast on a bike before as I flew down the rocky paths burning away brake pads, zipping through the forest and passing an “Extreme Biking tour group” we came across. All the while knowing full well that my bike was not meant for this and that any mistake would end in my permanent residency inside Kirirom National Park. I might even get a sign. The day got even more hilarious after we played up to the resort manager that our SE-Asia bike tour was something unique, the above mentioned extreme biker group pulled up. These guys at first glance were hardcore, they had awesome bikes, intense components that would make most of my biker friends back home in Canada drool, and some even had helmet cams.

Upon closer evaluation and some Isreali-mishmash talk I found them out to be merely masquerading as bikers. They were driven to the top of the mountain. They are driven mostly wherever they go, and are dropped off only when the biking is generally downhill. They have trucks that carry their bags and food along the way so they really require almost no effort whatsoever. Though as one of the guys reminded me, “We are ze age uff yewr parints I sink”We stayed here for 2 nights and thanks to our bartering skills (could also in this case be called begging skills) Anderson doing some name dropping and promising to write an article about the resort, we payed only a fraction of the price and could still use off the amenities.

Here I should finally plug Andersons Blog, where due to his addiction to writing and the internet you can probably find more informative and much more frequently updated accounts of where we are and what we're doing. He usually has his laptop open and updates nearly every time we stop at a place that has the internet. He has also been in the 'blog' business for quite some time and his is a little more fluide and pleasing to the eyes.

We took off from Kirirom with the intention of getting halfway to Kampot, but due to intense monsoonal rains and road flooding we only got about 30 km's. We had to pull over to a gas station because we were soaked to the bone with rain smashing us down from a near horizontal angle. When we got to the service station we found out that there were no guesthouses for at least 100kms, which at this point was too far and dangerous. I am not surprised that so many Khmers die each year in automobile accidents, we had already passed two dead bodies on the road. These people drive with reckless abandon, having more close calls than you can imagine that would leave the average North American breathing erratically on the shoulder too stunned to continue driving.

"A close call to say the least"

As we rode down the road, semi's kicked up so much water we needed paddle boats, double-decker buses passing each other at 100km's an hour, ox-carts that seem intent on holding their ground and the odd cow making a mad-dash to the greener pastures of the other side of the road. It was a constant battle with the elements and the insane.Being stranded on the side of the road, as the parking lot filled with more and more water we had a choice to make: Try to sleep in the Buddhist temple down the road, or try to wave down a travel van. Travel vans speed along from the capital to other surrounding cities carrying people and more crap than even the most devout clowns could pack into the van. In mid-sentence Liz took off after one that looked half empty and hailed it to the side of the road. The drivers loaded our 5 bikes, none of which were actually IN the van, just tied onto the back, we piled into the van which reeked of dead fish and took off at 120km/h for Sihanoukville, 107kms away from our intended destination, but it was better than being flooded out. Sihanoukville was a wet, trashy little town which boasts itself as the beach haven of Cambodia. My impression of it was surely impacted by the fact that we were in the middle of a monsoon, but still I found its allure to be lacking in nearly every way. I'm sure under different circumstances it could be great, maybe next time.

We were all relatively eager to get out of Sihanoukville, but due to the torrential down pour we weren't sure when that would be, but after 2 nights we had had enough and bit the bullet to pack up and risk the weather in an attempt to get back on the road to our original destination of Kampot. We took off early friday morning, grabbed a snail-paced breakfast and hit the pavement for the 107km journey.

Ön th way to Kampot"

We are now in Kampot, which two days ago was under at least a meter of flood water. The guesthouse we are in right now was nearly completely submerged. The riverside guesthouse is right on the river and gives a clear unhindered view of Bokor National Park. The mountains are indeed massive and in such a location that the clouds cover almost half of it. We are trekking to the summit tomorrow, though we cannot bike because the road is closed, it should still be fun. Coming down might be a little less amusing but my bike will probably thank me. From here we will head to the small seaside town of Kep, which is renown for its seafood. From there we will make the 50km bike ride to the Vietnamese border and start or trip in the land of the Dong. We have already been using a decent amount of currencies and the chance to struggle awkwardly when paying for things in a new currency awaits!

I miss everyone a lot and hope you are all healthy and happy.

"No filters or effects on this shot of Angkor Wat"

*Captions are off center, I can't fix this now