Ho Chi Min City and all the chaos!

HCMC was a bit of a blast with only one day spent there, though a wonderfully enjoyable jam-packed one! We blitzed through so that we could meet up with some friends in a city a little north of us.

Cycling into Ho Chi Min was an adventure though much more manageable that we had expected...being amongst hundreds and hundreds (maybe thousands?) of motorbikes and scooters was surprising navigable.

We spent our first night trying to locate a night bus to take us to Nha Trang to meet Daylyn and Nick, but failed miserably...Vietnam appears too busy with tourists to do what we wish at the drop of a hat, like we had in Cambodia. Instead of being on a bus we had a nice dinner and went for a ca phe...Vietamese love their coffee! It is served very concentrated, and with condensed milk for a surgary rush. One can have it hot or pour it over ice for a more refreshing drink.

Cameron taking ín a first of many, many, MANY coffees!

Our one day blitz of HCMC was based on the Lonely Planet walking tour--brilliant for people who want to see it all without spending lots of time planning. We took in a few museums, the bést being the War Remnants Museum where we took in some history on the Vietnam war with a special section on the after effects of Agent Orange. Learning about Agent Orange was particularly upsetting as there are so many people of our generation and younger who never să the war but are suffering physical and mental disabilities from the effects of pre-natal exposure.

Cathedral..about 10% of Vietamese are Christian

We wrapped up our day in the city with a drink on the roofof-top bar at a fancy smancy hotel to watch the sun go down. Hopped on a night bus, not without hassle about our bikes and settled, somewhat, for a 10 hour journey to Nha Trang. Unfortunately the camera battery was dead at that point and we have no evidence of Cam being crammed into a single bunk on the bus, backpack on his tummy, and feet squished into the end of his too-short bed.

A busy street market nearby our hotel. Love the hats!

Our last days in Cambodia

We left Koh Kong on a bus in order to get ourselves across the country a bit...with only five days left in Cambodia we wanted to make our way to the south coast. The bus ride was uneventful--no squashed-in-a-3-ft-high-bathroom-puking episodes and we clammered off around noon to follow up with a few hours of riding.

Kampot was nice medium sized city, with the main attraction being Bokor National Park and the Bokor Hill Station--ruins of a palace from the French colonial times. We decided to do a tour as they've made it almost impossible to see on your own. Excited, armed with lots of enthusiasm and a group of 6 others we left for the day...a day that went horribly wrong!

Bokor National Park Hill Station--I don't think the guide knew what it was at all actually...luckily we had our trusty Lonely Planet!

The tour guide had never been to Bokor before and it was clear he didn't know what we should be looking at. While we had a good 1.5 hr hike up the mountain (not without our guide going double pace so that our group was straggling behind him by miles), the top was fun to explore though we all wandered aimlessly while the other tour group, whom we came to envy, had a guide explaining the details of the ruins. Lunch was a mere two scoops (without exageration) of curry and a baguette...we were all starving to pieces and drooling as again, the other group was asked if they wanted seconds of curry and rice, and was there enough of the hundred loaves of bread available for everyone? We finished a couple hours early, despite going on a sunset river cruise and our ravinous gang decided to get a meal in the time we had to kill. Note: the group was on their tour until the boarded the boat for the river cruise. Our meal fit the theme of the day, it was terrible too...moldy cheese, cold soup, forgotten orders, miscellaneous nasty tastes and overly expensive. Blah! We all enjoyed relaxing on the boat cruise and went for drinks at the end of the day to celebrate a failed tour, but a great day with great people. Cheers to that!

The group bonding over a little mutual moaning session

A short cycle to a nearby beach town, Kep, made for our last nights in Cambodia. Kep is slow going with the main highlight being the famous peppercorns. We biked out to a peppercorn plantation and we both surprised--did you know pepper looks like a teeny tiny cluster of grapes?! Our dinners there were stunning--the other highlight in Kep is the crab market and we had fantastic meals of squid with peppercorn, grilled fish, crab cooked Khmer style, and celebrated with a glass of wine!

Kep reminded us of Stanley Park and was just stunning in the evening

We've now cycled to Takeo and ride our last 50 km out of Cambodia tomorrow, entering Vietnam for the next month.

Goodbye Cambodia, we had a fantastic time!

Chi Phat

During our last blog updating spree (in Koh Kong) we somehow did not do Chi Phat. This leaves the impression that we basically crossed a river to the town of Chi Phat and immediately turned around and biked back to the highway in order for Meg to vomit in the sink of the sauna hot, urine smelling, bathroom on a bus to Koh Kong. This was not the case, in fact we spent two pleasant days in the Community Based Ecotourism site of Chi Phat.

As Meg alluded to in the post about leaving Phnom Penh it was a little bit of an adventure to get across the river into our destination town. The ferry into town was a little raft with a long tail engine on it that all the locals would pile on to with their scooters and chickens and vegetables. The day we arrived we were surprised to see that it appeared that a twelve year old boy and his younger sister were operating the ferry. We were even more surprised when it turned out that they were. Anyway, they were quiet proficient at it. The little girl got us all loaded onto the boat and using a 1x4 (which appeared to be a broken piece of the raft deck) levered us into the water (the raft had stuck to the bottom with all the extra weight). The little boy whipped out a cord and pull started the motor. Everything went quiet smoothly until we got about 1/3rd of the way across the river, that's when the motor stopped. It then failed to run despite about twenty attempts by the boy to get it going again. I had expected that at some point one of the adults would have jumped in to help, but the consensus seemed to be that at twelve years the kid was probably the best man to resolve the problem. Not knowing much about long tail motors myself, and not even knowing how to say "motor" in Khmer I had to agree.

At this point we were adrift in the water and the boats which passed didn't seem inclined to help. Fortunately the little girl wasn't just useful for taking off and landing, she pulled out that little 1x4 and started paddling us to shore. I would be hard pressed to think of anything more ridiculous than this little girl trying to paddle us to shore with a 1x4. At the time I was thinking that maybe I should kneel down on the edge of the platform and start trying to help out by using one hand to paddle. It would have effectively doubled our horsepower I think. Unfortunately I had to keep holding my bike up.

After a bit the little boy developed a method of pull starting the motor and using the two seconds of time before it stalled to push us closer to shore. After a few minutes of this we were across. Then came the offloading. Safety not being of utmost importance, a foot wide plank was set loosely from the ferry half way up a hill on the shore. Scooters would gun in it off the ferry in order to get across the plank and then up the little bit of hill on the far side. This became an issue after a bit because, for one the ferry had slowly drifted away and the plank was falling off the deck and two, the scooters that were last were precariously balancing large baskets on either side of the back seat. This would have been okay while traveling quickly down the road, but posed a problem when having to travel a narrow unsteady path from a standstill. Anyway, everyone got across with only one man having to jump in the water to prevent falling in with his scooter. Meg and I walked our bikes across the plank. For this twenty minutes of entertainment we paid 75 cents.

Ferrying into Chi Phat. I know we already put this picture up, but we only have one shot of us ferrying. We do have a video as well, but it is not clear to us how put them up here.

Anyway on the way into Chi Phat we came across a couple really new and nice looking guest houses and things looked to be going well. We were excited about the adventures we would have in this fair village.

Then we came to the headquarters of the Chi Phat experience. We were ordered into a set of chairs and interrogated on what kind of accommodations we would like (home stay, guesthouse, or eco-resort) and what kinds of activities we would like to do (hiking, boating, moutain biking... over night or not). Having seen the guest houses on the way into town with their comforting looking window screens (every 8th word/phrase out of Meg's mouth is Malaria, every 23rd is Dengue Fever, and every 50th is Japanese Encephalitis) we chose that option. Not having any idea what we wanted to do and not having any good information on which to base an opinion, we decided to do nothing. At hearing that we were to do nothing our interrogator appeared quite put out and we were summarily excused.

A nice fellow was waiting to guide us to our accommodation which was assigned (fairly we think) by the all controlling interrogator. We noted immediately that we were not going in the direction of the guest houses we had observed earlier. We noted after a little while that we were very far from the core of the town. Finally, we noted that the windows on our guest house did not have screens, which was fine, since our room had a very "open" concept in which we did not have a ceiling and the the walls did not go all the way to the roof. This was all a little off putting. Then we realized that we had no running water.

After a few minutes of raging things turned out just fine. Showering with a bucket was pretty easy and sleeping with a mosquito net is fun as it is like having a force field surrounding you (a force field that is quiet easily blown away by the fan used to cool us it turns out).

As we had missed our chance to do an organized trip (trips must be booked by 5pm the previous day), the next day we decided to rent a double kayak. It was a really pleasant experience being on the water, in control of our own destination and the banks of the river were quite pretty. We didn't make it all that far as we there was a bit of a head wind and both of us got achy pretty quick from using trapezius muscles that had seen no action since Quetico.

Meghan "Feeling Free" (good product placement, eh?) while we explored a secret tree cave in the river.

Me "Feeling Uncomfortable" in my ill fitting life jacket. Also, whenever I am not in a kayak I forget how damned uncomfortable I am while in a kayak.

After speaking with a few people who had headed out on activities during the day we learned a few things. The overnight trips covered the same ground that the day trips did, they were just broken up (less hiking each day) and cost more. Also, there were no bats at the bat cave. Based on this we decided that we would do a 22km out and back hike up to the "Silver Meadow".

The day of the hike went really well. It felt great to get out and stretch our legs out for a few hours. Like most "trecking" we have experienced over here so far, the walk was actually through trails that locals used to get around (by scooter) so it definitely did not have that off road feel. It was still hilly and long enough that by the end of the day we were really tired. The walk had us pass through a eucalyptus plantation, some grazing land, a bit of jungle (we saw a red squirrel looking thing (they are everywhere!) and heard some monkeys "woop-wooping" in the distance) and of course the silver meadows. The meadows were quite pleasant. Though we did not see any of the animals that might have been hanging out there according to the hike description, we did see one of those bug eating plants which was pretty cool. As I have to come to appreciate "alpine meadows" back home, I also like the "silver meadow" over here. Our guide was a really nice kid, though with his limited english and our lack of any Khmer we mainly learned that he was going to Phnom Penh that night to go visit his new niece or nephew and that he was not married. The breakfast, lunch and dinner supplied with the hike were also really, really good.

The guide and I having a water break. It turns out he was packing around about 10 lbs of water for us all day. We were also packing our own water. We ended up drinking the water he brought for us to though, so it worked out.

Meg chilling out after a hard day of hiking. She appears to be thinking about how bad ass she must look with her cut off shirt.

Meg wandering through the "Silver Meadow"

That pretty much sums up our trip to Chi Phat. We ended up writing the organization a little e-mail to suggest a few things that might be improved upon in the village, especially since everyone we talked to had similar complaints to us. At the same time though we really enjoyed our few days there.

Of course something we ate there made us sick.

Krong Koh Kong

We hopped a bus from Chi Phat (well, the highway at the turn-off for Chi Phat...we had to cycle ourselves back out of the bush!) with me puking and Cameron on his way to a state of nausea. Luckily the bus ride lasted only a couple hours, and the main floor of the bus was bare for luggage holding--which meant I sprawled myself across it in a sweaty, pukey heap. Thank you to Cam for taking care of such a thing!

Just a random shot showing off Cameron's madly creative photography skills. Look closely...do you see "Cambodia"?

We spent the first 2.5 days lying in bed, A/C cranked full blast, watching movie after movie after movie (luckily Cambodia happens to have six or seven pretty decent English channels, including one 24 hr. movie channel!) and eating next to nothing. Thankfully that passed and we hit the road...

We did a day tour to nearby Koh Kong Island. First off, was a stop not far from the guesthouse...outside the city is a Wildlife Santuary--a mangrove forest with a nice boardwalk through it.

Swingin', well..not quite...in the mangrove trees. What you can't see in this picture is how dodgy the track is. Cameron simply touched the railing and the whole thing broke down and fell into pieces in the water, whoops!

Next stop was a fishermen's village. This was similar to the floating villages we'd seen earlier in Cambodia, but much smaller and not quite the same dependance on boats as all the buildings were linked by a rickety bamboo walkway. We saw some people mending fishing nets, others relaxing in their hammocks, but the kids are always the highlight!

The little monkeys at the fishermens' village

Our last stop of the day was the island, and it was paradise. The water was warm and so crystal clear you saw right to the bottom. We were with the 6 other people on our tour, and that was it...had the beach quite literally to ourselves! The guides BBQ'd fish and veggie+pork skewers, and served mango salad on the side-YUM! We lazed around, read our books, and swam, swam, swam. An absolutely perfect day to celebrate a full recovery from our unwell tummies.

A serious slice of heaven.

Happy campers after a day on the beach!

While we had a couple more days in Krong Koh Kong, nothing exciting happened. After both being sick we kind of fell off the busy train and went into sloth mode. We tried to do some jungle trekking, but hit a wall with our plans a couple times and made the decision that perhaps it just wasn't meant to be. It's a long way out of the area, so we're jumping a bus to get down south for our last week in Cambodia.

From the city to the country

It felt good to get back on our bikes after four or five days in Phnom Penh...especially with the amount that we ate (and that includes a pepperoni pizza on the way out of town)!

Our riding is dictated by the spread of towns along the highway, as some are too small to have any guesthouses for us. The day we left Phnom Penh was short ride to Kampong Speu (west) because of exactly this reason. We cycled past loads of garment factories, and as the day was just finishing saw busloads and busloads of women being driven from the factories back to home in time for dinner.

The following day took us to Sre Ambel. It was awesome riding as we had a great tail wind and had 70 km behind us by the time lunch rolled around! We polished off another 30km after a pile of fried noodles at a trucker stop, and had enough time in Sre Ambel to wander around the little town before night fell.

The next morning we headed north to our destination, Chi Phat. Chi Phat is a little village 17 km off the main highway that has been picked by Wildlife Alliance to be developed into an eco-tourism community. There was a bit of confusion when we arrived as we expected to take be able to take a lazy river boat from the highway to Chi Phat, and promplty found out the boat "sometimes run, sometimes no" which meant we were back on our bikes! It was beautiful, though tough, going through sugar cane fields.

We finished our cycle in, with only one hurdle left...crossing the river into Chi Phat....

Phnom Penh..Welcome 2011!

We arrived in Phnom Penh with phenomonal timing..as we were looking for a place to stay, our friends Sarah and Graham (from England) spotted us on the street. It wasn't that random, as we did know what hotel they were staying in, and we were standing right outside of it when they found us, but there was still a sense of shock, surprise and delight at turning around to see their smiling faces jumping out at us!

Phnom Penh treated us well. We enjoyed our four days with Sarah and Grey, particularly the meals we had together. Despite the fact that we have been liking the endless amounts of rice and noodles we've been eating (and I do say that positively) we were surprised at how good a cafe late and croissant tasted, how delicious a steak sandwich with salad can be, and how succulent a plate of spaghetti bolagnse is. Managed a glass of wine, some apple pie...we were well re-charged for more Khmer food by the time we left!

We didn't just eat in the city though...did go to the Killing Fields and S21 Museum--both giving a good understanding on the Khmer Rouge period in Cambodia, a time when thousands of innocent civilians were killed as a communist leader tried to ransform the nation. We also saw the Royal Palace, wandered along the river, and saw some beautiful sculptures at the National Museum.

Royal Palace

Figuring out the meaning of the wall paintings, a popular Hindu story adopted into the Cambodian Buddist religion

We rang in the New Year with Sarah and Grey, along with their gang from the orphanage they were volunteering at. Had a nice dinner out, and moved between three or four bars, finished at quite a posh place (in fact, I think it beats any club I've been to or see in Vancouver) where the rich Cambodian kids seemed to spend their clubbing nights.

Graham and Cam ramping it up for New Years Eve

Girls and their cocktails!

Battambang to Phnom Penh - 300kms

The biking from Battambang to Phnom Penh was for the most part uneventful. The roads weren't quite as good as they had been from Poipet to Siem Reap, but aside from a short stretch on our second day the pavement was good enough to be comfortable. Our route took us from Battambang to Pursat to Kompong Chnang to Pnohm Penh.

The highlight of this section of the trip was definitely our ''Bamboo Train" ride on the second day. I am not sure whether bamboo trains are unique to Cambodia, but i had definitely not seen one before. It is a pretty clever way to utilitize idle train tracks though (apparently the bamboo train drivers known the train schedule, so the tracks really are idle). Basically the train consists of two sets of train wheels on axles that sit on the track, a platform made of bamboo (and maybe some stiffer dimensional lumber it looked like as well) that settles into place on bearings on the wheel axles, and a little engine that attaches to the rear axle by something like a fan belt.

Meg had found that there was a set of tracks that ran in the same general direction as our second day of biking and that bamboo trains ran on the track. By getting off at the train at a small town called Svay Sa we would be able to rejoin up with the highway and continue our journey without having to waste any time doing an out and back which most travellers have to.

With that plan in mind we got on the road early in Pursat and made for the junction of the city and the railway system. When we arrived we were informed that the first train heading in our direction was not until 10 (it was then 8), this wasn't going to work for us if we were to get all the way to Kompong Chhnang by dark so we said no and made to leave. We didn't say anything about the exhorbitantly high price the train driver had suggested we pay. In a confusion of words and arm waving the train was suddenly leaving at 9 with us on it and we hadn't bargained the price down.

At about this point, a woman who would become my nemesis for the next few hours came into the picture. At this point she appeared to be making harmless jokes about how white Meg was and how tall I was.

Anyway, we hopped aboard the platform with our bikes and that's when we realized that another difference between us and most other foreign bamboo train travellers was that we were actually on a regular train run. After we had sat on the platform everyone else started crowding in as well. Mom's and Dad's with babies, old women with big bags of produce and an assortment of other people. The old jokester from earlier sat basically on my feet.

Very quickly something became apparent, because we were big spenders the driver had gone well ahead of any scheduled run. The amazing thing is how many people still managed to get on the train with us, the unfortunate thing was that after about 15 minutes the drivers cell phone rang and we had to put the train in reverse and go back to pick up some people who had missed the train. Another consequence of our early departure was that we met alot of oncoming (on schedule) traffic. This was actually kind of neat as we got to see (over and over again) one of the great convenienences of these trains; that is that they are very easy to dismantle. When one train meets another there is a weighing which takes place and basically the people who will be least inconvenienced have to get their train off the track. As it turns out we were probably 20 people, a bunch of groceries and two peddle bikes so we lost every contest. We would all get off the platform, pick up the stuff off the platform, help pick up the platform off the axles and then pick up the axles off the tracks. It was sort of fun. The amazing thing were the sorts of things we lost the contest to: one platform must have had 6 feet high by 5' by 8' of cut firewood, another was stacked with logs just like a logging truck back home and one had fewer people, less stuff, but a motorbike which trumped us. We also ran into a similarly populated train (people and produce) and that caused a bit of a stare down, but we still lost. This continued on for about an hour and half, stopping now and then to drop people off at their farms along the way. It was a really cool way to see the country, but maybe 30 minutes too much sitting on that platform with the sun beaming down.

The downpart of all this adventure was the old women who, no matter how many times we had to disembark and get back on, was always at my feet. She seemed to take a personal dislike to me (perhaps because the train left early on our account?) and spent a better part of the journey talking at me in Khmer. I could tell by the awkward expressions of the people around her that what she was saying was not pleasant. She also took it upon herself to grab my sunglasses and wear them for a time, try to take my shoes from me, mock my laugh, and at one point sneak away our bug spray when it fell from my backpack (while her back was turned, I later stole it back from beneath her flipflops where she had hid it). The only bright side was that she also cursed out the driver at one point when we had to let someone else pass on the track so I think she might have just been like that.

Anyway, we finally arrived at Svay Sa and that's when he had our second big adventure. A rather uncomfortable 25 kilometers of red dirt roads in pretty rough shape. The ride out took us two hours and by the time we got back to the highway our bodies just felt beat down. Fortunately at that point we only had 60km left to go to Kompong Chhnang.

Being Cool in Battambang

Battambang was a pleasant little town and we spent a few days there. They had a nice central market and some really nice park land along the river which runs through the city. According to the lonely planet there was also some nice French architecture, but we found that aspect to be pretty underwhelming.

We spent our first night there cruising through the park saying "hello" to Cambodian children (I am sure we have mentioned elsewhere that one of the top fun things to do in Cambodia is to greet white people) and we almost hopped in on some aerobics. I chickened out though, mainly because the only people doing the aerobics were 40 year old women and I would really have stuck out, which I don't like to do. Also though, I really didn't think it looked like a solid work out.

The next day was spent calling family to wish them a merry Christmas (Boxing Day morning for us was Christmas Day back home) and catch up a bit, followed by a laid back cycle through the town checking out temples that were only a few years or decades old rather than centuries old as we had been seeing the few days before. They weren't as good, I can't lie, but it was nice to see a few colors that weren't gray. It was also interesting actually as the Cambodian Buddhist Temples are quite different from those in Thailand and they certainly are not as open. It seems for the most part they are closed for the use of Monks only.

Me, loitering in front of a Cambodian Buddhist Temple (Note the lack of a big inviting front door)

Anyway, that other stuff was pretty low on the scale of interesting things. I just put it in there so people don't accuse me of skipping days. Our last day in Battambang is when we had our most fun and also how this post got it's name.

On our last day in Battambang we rented a motorbike. Not a real motorbike, I think we would call it a scooter, but everyone here calls it a motorbike. Anyway, I was a little nervous to drive this thing, especially after my initial efforts to get the hang of shifting, braking and signaling didn't go that smoothly. After my second loop around the block though things were going a little better and Meg hopped on and we were on the road. Now I realized that people don't look very bad-ass when they are driving a scooter (see examples below), but honestly Meg and I felt pretty good out there, cruising down dirt roads approximately three times faster, and with alot less effort, than on our bikes.

This is how we looked on the scooter

This is how we felt on the scooter!

We weren't just riding aimlessly though, during the day we checked out a few major sites in the Battambang region. Our first event of the day was an Angkor era temple at the end of a long flight of stairs. It was quiet a nice site and we were enjoying the stairs to the top until Meg almost stepped on a snake. I was a step ahead of Meg but a few feet over so I guess I am not very attentive. Meg had just about put her foot down on the little character when she noticed it moving around and stepped back. We have no idea if it was poisonous or not, though I am going to err on the side of extremely deadly (for the drama), but it was certainly an ill tempered beast. Back home it seems most snakes will slither off given the opportunity, this thing just stood there, sort of crooking up his head and body to give us the evil eye. Then a small kid came to save Meg (I was busy staring at the snake to ensure it wasn't about to turn around and jump in my direction) by throwing various things at it (rocks, branches) until, a little put-out looking, the snake crept over the edge of the stairs. We were a little on edge after this near death experience so a little while later, while we were exploring a pitch black cave around the corner from the temple, when a frog jumped on Megs foot she really freaked out. I guess I should mention that Meg was wearing sandals that day.

Snake that almost killed Meg.

Our next site was a modern temple on a mountain filled it turns out with Macaques (some kind of monkey which Meg wouldn't let us go near for fear of the rabies. Honestly, every fifth word out of Megs mouth is rabies.). The temple on the mountain had a really nice view of the surrounding countryside. While we were looking around we were cornered by a smooth talking monk who managed to very subtly corner us into donating money to his school building cause. A good cause and a pretty effective spokesperson we both agreed after we had donated and started our way down the mountain.

Monkeys Hanging out at the Temple

Countryside from the top of the mountain

Things we saw from the top of Phnom Sampeau

At the same site as the mountain temple is what is called locally the Killing Cave. As with other things in Cambodia whose names begin with "Killing" (see the Phnom Penh entry when we get to it) this cave was related to the Khmer Rouge. At the cave mouth people would be bludgeoned to death (or almost to death) and then they would be thrown into the cave below. The site currently has a buddha and a glass case with bones from the victims piled inside.

Our last site of the day was chosen mainly for it's distance from the mountain temple (we were keen to do some cruising) and was another Angkor era ruin.

Finally after a long day of riding about we settled into the rooftop bar of our hotel and watched the dusty sunset.

Dusty Sunset