Blog Day 5

Day 5 of our Cambodian biking trip started at 5 am, up early, dress in lycra, omelette for breakfast, stretching in the car park and then off on a 16km ride through a surprisingly cold Cambodia accompanied by a very deep orange sun popping up over the tree line. It was a great morning for biking and the first stretch of roads along the river in Pursat was beautiful and well worth the early wake up call.

The challenge for the day started after these first 15 km. It was a 45 km long straight canal with a small road going along each side, the ground was sometimes very soft sand, sometimes great and sometimes like a rollercoaster but at least the lack of big trucks and fast cars made the ride very pleasant. This canal is part of some irrigation system and it feeds the nearby rice fields with water. The result is the fields greener than I have ever seen before. To go on this kind of road alone would be heavy for the head as the road constantly disappears in the distance but with a group of cyclists it was actually much easier than I thought.

After 4 days on the roads here we have seen many remote and rural places but today we saw places that most people never will have a chance to see. At some points during the day John mentioned the fact that you could see horizons in 4 different directions, never ending canals in 2 directions and endless fields in the other two directions. We had no shade at all during the ride and in the afternoon we had very very hot weather.

As the day went towards a close we passed some pineapple plantages, duck farms, families fishing in the canal and some guys riding on water buffalos. The day was tough but worth every minute of effort. Tonight we are staying in Moung Roussey, a small town with no street lights, one restaurant, 3 hotels, no foreigners except for the ones in Lycra and a massive market one meter from the entrance to our hotel. It is not flashy around here, they have no nightclubs but it is nice to come here and see how small town Cambodia looks like. We ended up the evening in the local restaurant with the spiciest mango salad I have ever tried. Everyone is shattered, it was a beautiful but brutal day.

Now off to sleep