Tag: Cycle Touring

Cambodia Day 1 – Around Kampot – Phnom Chhnork and Secret Lake

Having woken up after a good night sleep in our tent we prepared breakfast and got ready to explore the surrounding area of Kampot. We headed south into the countryside where we experienced our first glimses of rural Cambodia. We both have a good feeling about Cambodia, it feels more relaxed than Vietnam (and just as friendly) and we get a sense that wildcamping will be a lot easier over the next month. This is a good thing as its been quite a bit more expensive (Cambodia imports most things) but it’ll be interesting to see if this continues away from the touristy areas. Before we got here we heard so many reports that Cambodia was so much poorer than Thailand or Vietnam but we havent really seen this yet.

We’ve already passed lots of Wats or temples but we’ve also seen quite a number of Mosques and we even heard the callto prayer yesterday lunchtime. 
We took some air out the tires once we turned onto the dirt red track. It was good to explore without all our gear and we were soon rolling through the harvested rice fields. It’s still incredibly flat and fertile but the country here is less intesely farmed than Vietnam and there are a lot more cattle – the cows all have humps and huge flaps of skin on their necks!! We stopped at a village party (well it might have been the morning after actually) where they were playing live music. 

Our first stop were some natural caves at Phnom Chhnork which have housed a temple since the 7th Century. We were quite surprised when our guide led us through a hidden, pitch black passageway on the way out. 

 We followed a small canal for a few km until we reached a huge reservoire locally called ‘secret lake’. 

  
We chose our waterside spot and cooked up our lunch. The helinox chairs again coming into their own! 

  

  
  This dragonfly fly kept us company throughout our stop.

 
 After a quick dip to cool off we headed back completing our 45k circle, finishing the evening with a few beers and a game of chess.

Tomorrow we tackle the 1080m climb up Bokor Mountain…

Ha Tien to Kampot

Annie has been recovering from the flu so we took an extra day in Ha Thien to recover. On our ‘off day’ we had a little local ride around the headland south west and found some sleepy fishing boats and a local beach resort.

   
    
 After a nice evening playing cards and showing these kids some card tricks we retired for another early night.
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It was an early start to do the 5km to the border. Paddy picked up some kerosene (dua lao) for the stove, which came double plastic bagged, no other container!

After the border Annie’s energy was fine so we decided to skip Kep and head on for Kampot.

We had a beautiful lunchtime stop and cooked fabulous noodles under the shade of a tree. We’re finding our feet well with the cooking and needless to say, again, the Helinox chairs are marvellous!

  
Rolling into Kampot, we eventually found a uber friendly hostel with its bar emerging from the jungle right on the river….perfect to swim and relax with a beer. If any cycle tourers find themselves in Kampot it’s definitely worth heading here (Kampot River Bungalows) where we have been pitching our tent for 1$ a night.

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Cambodia immediately feels more relaxed, less traffic on the roads and Kampot seems a nice place to spend a few days.

Egg Surprise, Wild Camping and a tribute to David Bowie

January 13th 2016

This afternoon we reached Phu Quoc island after our two day, 130km cycle from Long Xuyen. 

It has been a great couple of days and we are settling into a good rhythm, managing more miles in less time. It has been completely flat the whole way which has been perfect for this first week – it’ll be interesting to see how we get on with some slopes, although this might not be for some time.

Our bums are still sore – on the second day we even tried the double shorts tactic.

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We’ve enjoyed a ‘varied diet’ including liver & kidney. During one lunchtime we enthusiastically pointed at what we thought were harmless eggs but they turned out to be fertilised, semi-formed ducklings… Paddy’s even had feathers, a head and a beak! He was encouraged to have a taste but the response I got back was ‘over my dead body’.

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Most importantly we saw through our plan to camp on the eve of the second day. Before our trip, we had read a couple of blogs which said camping was difficult or even impossible in Vietnam.

Due to the Delta area being intensley irrigated and farmed, finding a camping spot was a little tricky at first. Finally we passed a small patch of forest next to the road which turned out to be pretty perfect. The only slight irritation were the red fire ants but long socks and our helinox chairs soon sorted us out.

WE ARE SO GLAD WE BROUGHT THE CHAIRS!!!

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It was good shopping for supplies and cooking our own dinner and breakfast. The Optimus stove has been great.

  
It was way too hot to sleep under the fly sheet but we were still protected from the mozzies without it and enjoyed the added bonus of star gazing before falling asleep. We both had minor irrational panics during the night – convinced we were going to be eaten (!?) or discovered – other than that we slept soundly until dawn. 🙂

  
After camping we set off for Ha Tien and on the way we were passed out by the Tour of Vietnam bike race (that’s not it’s official name but it’ essentially what it is). We got a lot of attention from the race photographers and friendly support crew.

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Finally we rolled into town around 2pm and enjoyed a few beers and a good night sleep.

We logged onto Wi-Fi for the first time in two days and read the news about David Bowie. Devastated. What an artist. We enjoyed watching videos and interviews of him over our beers.

We’re writing this on the ferry to the paradise island of Phu Coc where we’ll celebrate Annie’s birthday tomorrow.

Tanh Hoa – 100km on

Well here we are! A hairy ride through HCMC, a few wrong turns, 5 road side wees, 2 huge bowls of Pho and many smiles and waves later we have completed our first day on our tandem.

We made it, even if the German chocolate biscuits that Gina (our warm showers host) gave us for the journey didn’t…

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We think we did a 100km in total and we’ve stopped overnight at a sleepy town called Tanh Hoa. Our position
10.658degN,106.181W

It seems we are the only foreigners here – one of the joys of arriving by bike – but we are acutely aware we need to improve our basic Vietnamese quickly.

My bum (Annie) is more than feeling the 7 hours in the saddle although Ben’s bikers balm is working it’s magic.

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Our hotel is basic but clean. We feel the bed spread pretty much sums it up…

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Paddy is physically in pretty good shape although mentally exhausted from navigating through the road traffic. Dad will be pleased to know that his suggestion to fit a handlebar mirror was a good one and we would encourage other cycle tourers to think about getting one too. The Mekong Delta is heavily populated resulting in quite a lot of traffic and it’s really useful to know if there are large vehicles coming up behind us. The Vietnamese are not aggressive drivers but they do like to overtake wherever possible, we can use the mirror to slow down/speed up so we’re never  near 2 trucks passing each other. We also wished we had bought pollution masks as the roads in HCMC and other towns can be truly nasty.

The bike performed well – we have a slightly warped disk break (a result from the flight) which we have fixed but need to keep an eye on.