Day 18 (16th Feb 2013)

Day 18 / 16th Feb 2013

Phnom Phen to Siam Reap

We slept well past 12.30  as the  wifi connection was good, so I was chatting on what's app with Kruttika and Rajoo was checking his mails and studying the map. We had taken a decision of taking a bus to Seam Reap. Looking at the available days with us, we will get about 10 days to cycle and we have decided to use 5 days to cycle in Thailand and 5 days to cycle in Malaysia to get the feel of both the countries. The plan is rough , let's see how it goes.

We had to reach bus stand near central market at 6.30 as to load our cycles in bus which was to start at 7 am. So got up at 5 feeling sleepy, got ready and pushed off towards central market for which we had taken directions yesterday, located it very easily but had difficulty in finding the office of our bus company as there were many travel company offices in that area and people were either reluctant to give directions or sent us to some other companies. Finally found the Sourya transport office. Our bus was standing there, to our surprise the bus was big with two decks, lower for the luggage and upper for seating. There was ample space for luggage and our cycles could fit in , in standing position.:-) :-) :-)

Note three smiling faces of Dipankar, Rajoo and me.

We had a quick grab at Chicken? Roll and Chicken patties and boarded bus with good hot milk coffee. :-)  Only 1 smiling face as I (Kedar) love coffee the most.

The bus journey to Siem Reap was uneventful. The terrain was more or less ( or rather more) same, with vast plains on both the sides as far as one could see, occasional villages with houses on stilts, vast paddy fields with very few trees - mostly palm. We reached Siem Reap at 2 pm. The bus depot was on highway. We got on our cycles and rode to city center which was about 5 kms away. We looked for the hotels, but all the hotels where we inquired were full. So we decided to have lunch first and then search for the hotel. The lunch was good and reasonably priced. I finished my lunch early so while Rajoo & Dipankar were having lunch I went to look for the hotel. Got lucky at the 4th hotel, 'The Siem Reap Central Hostel,Angkor High school Road, Siem Reap. Tel: +855 12 517 111. It turned out to be a decent hotel at reasonable price of $ 20 for room with 3 beds. It is located near the central market just across the river.

We dropped our luggage at the hotel and rushed towards Angkor Wat World Heritage Site which is 8 kms away on our cycles. At the entrance there was a big queue to buy tickets for the next day as the counter opens at 5 pm. and we reached there at 5pm. One can purchase a day pass-$ 20, three day pass -$ 40 or seven day pass for $ 60. We decided to buy a day pass. Our photographs were taken and the passes were issued. To our surprise it did not take long and we were allowed to enter the park the same evening free of cost. We rushed in and went towards Angkor Wat Temple which is one of the most prominent temples in the park. We did not go inside but went ahead to 'Phnom Bekheng' which is the only hill in surrounding flat area. We parked our bikes at the base and climbed atop on a densely vegetated path. There was a temple in ruins on top, the sun was setting & the view was breath taking. The only put off was the crowd which reminded me of Bombay point at Mahabaleshwar. After sunset we got down, sat for a while near the moat which surrounds Angkor Wat Temple complex, and then paddled back to Siem Reap to food and bed. Good Night !!! zzz..

 

Day 17 (15th of Feb)

Day 17 / 15th Feb 2013

Lovely and efficient mode of transport.... Tuk-Tuk

Phnom Penh

It was another 132 km day yesterday, and as it was a free day with only local site seeing to do we lazed a bit, got up late and went out for a breakfast at a corner cafe. Street 278 is like Koregaon Park area in Pune, a typical foreign tourist hang out. We were hungry and even though we had a choice of having south indian breakfast, opted for big continental breakfast which turned out to be not so big but the setting was good and we enjoyed the leisure.

Almost all the hotels were full and we could not get the triple sharing room, so we had taken two rooms which were available for only one night, so we had job of searching for another hotel. Yesterday while crossing a ferry at Neak Loeung, we had met one man who said he is a tuk tuk driver in Phnom phen and had given his cell number. We called him and he appeared in ten minutes flat, so we went for a hotel hunt with him. He took us to street 172, another foreigner hang out. We found a hotel 'Angkor Mithona' , booked a room there, got back to our old hotel, checked out, and went to the new hotel. While going there Rajoo had a minor accident and luckily he did not get hurt but his rear wheel got damaged. As luck goes there was a cycle mechanic bang opposite our hotel, we gave him the wheel and off we went with John, our tuk tuk driver for a city tour.

The first destination was killing fields of Pol Pot, a former Khmer Rouge chief, famous for his atrocities and responsible for wiping out estimated 30,00,000 people including children and women, just in a span of 4 years between 1974 and 1978 in most inhuman ways possible. The virtual guided tour of killing fields assisted by recorded commentary was very effective, which deeply moved us from within.

We got out in a pensive mood and drove towards the city. Our driver took us to the Tuk Tuk Cafe for lunch. The mood changed there with pleasant ambiance and as we met a Gujrati- English fellow who met us earlier at Dalat in Vietnam. He was surprised to see us catching up with him in the same time as he did even by riding our bikes. He had earlier seen us riding to Cu Chii tunnels as well and had tried to wave to us. He was impressed with our speed and so we were as it hit us that we really had' done a long distance in a short span and that too without missing any site seeing :-) :-) :-)

Our next stop was a Pagoda on top of the only hill named Wat Phnom. Then we rushed to the Royal Palace. Unfortunately they had closed it for a day before the usual closeing time of 5 pm. So we went to the National Museum which was next to the palace. The museum building was impressive so were the articles displayed. This museum was built by French in 1920, and most of the articles displayed were from 7th to 9th century - pre Angkor period, 11th and 12th century - Angkor period and from modern period. Most of the statues were of Hindu Gods such as Bramha, Shiva- Parvati, Ganpati, Laxmi, Hanuman even Kartik swami and from Hindu mythology such as Pandawas and Kauravas and from Ramayana.

After museum we returned to our hotel said good bye to John our tuk tuk diver. The cycle mechanic had done his job, he had repaired the wheel and had fitted it to the cycle. We met a cyclist from Norway, who was looking for bus to go to Thailand border but no bus company was ready to take him with the cycle. In the morning when me and Dipankar had gone for hotel hunt, Rajoo had booked us on Phnom Phen Sourya Transport Company bus to Seam Reap, they had accepted to take our cycles at an extra cost of $ 5. We told him so. We had to collect our laundry from our old hotel, so me (kedar) and Rajoo went to collect our laundry.

Later on went out for food, had ice cream and I returned to our hotel to get on with blog writing and Dipankar and Rajoo went to net cafe to post previous blog and to take massage. Let's know about it from them...

Well it was very good authentic massage... we were looking for a good traditional massage, no hanky-panky and so it was....Me n Dipankar were side by side, really felt relaxed and sleepy. The big westerner next to us had actully fallen asleep and was snoring during massage.

We went back to the hotel, arranged for the watchman to keep the cycles inside for the night. I took one shot of Jamaican Rum :-) . We were to leave at 6 next morning to catch a bus to Siem Reap.

Day 16 (14th Feb 2013)

Day 16 / 14 th Feb 2013

Svey Ring to Phnom Penh - 132 km

Left Svey Ring a little later than usual, that is 6.30 in the morning. The road was as flat as it could be. Though the surface was not the smoothest there were no pot holes and it was straight as an arrow for miles together. With rice fields on both the side and nice simple wooden houses with sloping roofs on stilts and the sun on our back as we were heading straight west, it was a beautiful setting for our ride. We passed by many school children riding on their cycles to school almost all saying hello to us, everybody was wearing white shirt and blue pant. There were birds chirping on the trees and flying around, a nice change after Vietnam where almost all the birds we saw were in cages.

We could not find a Bun mi stall that used to be our daily breakfast nor any other thing to eat for breakfast, by this time it had become very hot to ride. So we started looking for a place to stop. So we had to make do with just the coffee and at about 11 Stopped for lunch and carried forward. At 12.30 it became too hot to ride so we started looking out for a place to stop. We usually stopped in Cafe's with hammock's, order a coffee or so or have lunch and relax till it became cooler to ride. We could not find such a spot. But there were houses with big shaded trees. We requested one person whether we could stop for a while in the shade and he happily agreed. We stopped there, washed ourselves. Big earthen pots 'RANJAN' filled with water, almost 5 to 6, were kept for washing. The whole family was under the stilt house, some working with coconut leaf mats, other relaxing in hammocks, lots of mango trees in the back yard, pig sty, dogs running around, it was very peaceful there. All of us actually slept.

At 2.30 we started towards Phnom Penh which was about 50 kms away. My self ( Kedar ) and Dipankar were little ahead and Rajoo was following us. We stopped when it was about 10 kms to Phnom Phen to allow Rajoo to catch us up before we enter the big city. We had kept our cycles on road and were on a look out for Rajoo. We waited and waited, but Rajoo did not turn up. We were getting worried and as we had not purchased new sim cards we were not able to communicate with each other. Finally we decided to go back and check. Fortunately we met a person with a motor bike, requested him to take me back. He understood English and took me back. We went back about 10 kms but could not find Rajoo. We concluded, we must have missed each other and so decided to go ahead, worried about how to find Rajoo in a biggest city in Cambodia, Phnom Penh.

We reached Phnom Penh and first thing we did was to buy sim cards. Then e-mailed Rajoo our numbers. To our relief within 5 minutes we got a call from Rajoo saying he has reached safely and booked in a hotel called Golden Gate on street 278. Somehow we had managed to miss each other on a straight road :-(

The saying goes - all is well that ends well !!!

Distance covered :132 kms on flat roads, Weather : Hot and humid

Day 15 (13th Feb 2013)

Day 15 / 13th of Feb

Ho Chi Minh to Svey Ring - 132 km

Dipankar getting a lesson in tying his hat  we guess ;-)

We had taken directions for the first town towards Cu Chi and Moc Bai which was the border town on the Vietnam side and Bavet which was on the Cambodian side. We decided to try our best to visit the Cu Chi tunnels about which we had read a lot. They had been built by the Vietnamese people (Cu Chi Guerillas) to escape the enemy attacks, bombings and the enemy had been unable to destroy them till the very end. In all our research we had been unable to find out how far they were from our planned route. When we reached Cu Chi town which was 7km off our route we found to our dismay that the 'tunnels' were a further 19kms away, we had almost decided to head back to the highway as there was no taxi in sight and we had to cross the border well before eve.... while in these thoughts a local person invited us for some tea and sweets, we decided to respect his hospitality and have tea with him, we shared our family photos with them and also tried to explain our predicament, he got up and got his neighbour to help translate, she had worked in Saigon and knew a little english. He immediately sent his son into town to get us a taxi, when that did not work out he said he would arrange for another scooter, so we now had three scooters with drivers and we were the passengers. It was just amazing to have met a person like him, so enthusiastic to help us see the tunnels. Almost immediately we saw that Kedar had changed his position to that of a driver :-)  it was an old honda motorbike. We reached the tunnels and our man took charge, he made sure we had the best guide, the best seats at the audio visual presentation...

Nothing can prepare you for the tunnels, they were like an underground city going below ground to 16 levels, we were taken only till the 2nd level and it was a very claustrophobic experience for me (Dipankar) at one point it was pitch dark and i was already on my hands and knees and my bag got stuck, i could neither move forward nor backward. Kedar was too far ahead, finally Rajoo got out his torch and i was able to free my bag and go ahead..... One of the ladies in our tour group went into the first tunnel and when she got out she was all red in the face and breathless..... and to imagine children were born in these tunnels and families lived here for months at a time.... it was a peek into the tenacious nature of people fighting to remain free..... it was all very moving. We rode back to Cu Chi, thanked the wonderful people who made this happen for us and headed to Moc Bai which was another 40 km away.

By the time we started riding again it was 12.30 pm and it was blazingy hot. Usually we take break in the afternoon for an hour or two, but today we had no option but to keep riding to reach border town 'Moc Bai' well in time to cross over to Cambodia and to reach 'Svey Ring' which was another 40 kms away. fortunately the road was flat and with just one halt for cold drinks we reached Moc Bai at about 2.30. There we stopped for lunch at a road side joint and then went to the border. We had no difficulty at either Vietnam side or on Cambodian side. We just had to fill up a form as we had already taken a visa in India.

It is amazing to see how things change when we cross from one country to another though geographically we are in the same region. There were huge Casino's on both sides of the road, road sides were littered with plastic waste, road surface deteriorated and thus our speed dropped to about 20 km/hr. We were clocking 25 kms/hr regularly on Vietnam side. The road had no proper shoulder and thus it was dusty- dust was almost non existant in Vietnam. The landscape also changed as there were much more open fields, rice paddys on both the side of the road till your vision could reach, ponds with water lily's, and almost all the houses were on stilts. The appearance of the people also changed - people wore more simpler clothes, and the colour of the skin became one shade darker.

Even though it was getting late we stopped at one fruit stall run by a girl and her mother. She prepared a wonderful mixed fruit milk shake for us. We had no opportunity to exchange money and we had not a single Riel (Cambodian currency) but we paid her in US $ which is commonly accepted every were in Cambodia and every one knows the exchange rate ( 1 US $ = 4000 Riels)

We reached Svey Ring at dusk and as we were entering the town one person approached us and started saying sleeping, sleeping....women, women???? We were shocked but he was just indicating to us about a hotel run by women's association. He took us to that river side hotel and it turned out to be a very comfortable, nice and clean place charging $ 15 for a 3 bed ac room

Distance covered : 132 Kms with diversion to Cu Chi village of about 10 kms. on mostly flat road in very hot conditions.

Day 14 (12th Feb 2013)

Day 14 / 12th of Feb

Got up early, had breakfast and headed to Miss Chau's office, we were to be picked up for the Mekong Delta tour from there. Had ice coffee while we waited. The bus took us to the riverside town of My Tho, a ride of about two and a half hours. 

We got some time to freshen up and were immediately herded onto a boat. There were 100's of tourists and dozens of boats, most seating about 20 people. It was a fixed itinerary, coconut candy making on one island, a small tour by small row boats 'sampans' there was actually a traffic jam in the narrow waterway :-) , bee keeping on one island, lunch on another island and local music on one island. It was very well managed and gave us a flavour of life in the Mekong delta. The floating market was closed due to Tet . We returned to Ho Chi Minh by 5 pm. Though the tour was inclusive of lunch, we were still hungry and thirsty so had sugar cane juice and some fruits as well. But we were quite hungry by the time we came back to HCMC because of the amount of cycling we were doing, our craving for food has gone up tremendously and we are hungry all the time even after eating loads of food. 

One advantage is we eat anything and every thing that comes our way without being fussy. Today though, Rajoo saw one Indian restaurant 'Tajmahal' in food lane and felt like eating there, so we went there and had mixed veg, palak paneer, roti and chapati - all veg food for the first time in 15 days. Rajoo also felt like having 'Chai' which we have not got till now.

On the tour we met an Austrian couple who owned a vineyard in Austria and traveled every year during hte lean season , which was winter in their part of the world. They had visited India last month and to our surprise they had liked the holy city of Benaras or Varanasi the most.

Tomorrow we head out to the border crossing on our way to Phnom Penh in Cambodia ....

Day 13 (11th Feb 2013)

Stones in the middle of nowhere...

Day 13 / 11th Feb 2013

Saigon ho!

After usual 'bunh mee' and coffee for the breakfast reached Saigon at about 9.00 am. We were told to go to District 1 (Quan 1 ) as there are many hotels in this area and Miss.Moon had given us a contact of Miss Chau, Coastal Travel Guide Ltd Co. that was also in the same area so we headed towards Q 1. On our way to Q 1 we were stopped by two Chinese men, they were happy to see us as they also were cyclists and had done the same route that we did, starting from China and were to go to Cambodia. They were young at 65 & 70 respectively. We clicked photographs together, communicated with each other, without a common language. The only common thing was that we were members of the 'cycling community'.

On our way to Q1 we arrived at a very well decorated and happening square named Saigon Opera House. It is a beautiful square with statue of Ho Chi Minh and the 262 meter tall Bitexco Financial Tower.

After asking for directions we reached the lane where Miss Chau was located. We called this lane 'Khau ani hotel galli' because every building was a hotel or an eatery or both. We found out soon enough that almost all the hotels were booked and those that did have rooms did not have space for our cycles. We left Kedar with Miss Chau and I and Rajoo went hotel hunting. We decided to finally try out the place that our Chinese cyclists were staying at. We got a cozy enough room and were able to park our cycles inside the hotel.

Kedar had some bad news for us, there were no 2 day tours to the Mekong delta and also all buses going to Phnom Penh were full because of the holidays and there was no bus till the 14th and our visas expired on the 14th, we changed our plans. Decided to take a one day tour of the Mekong delta and also decided to cycle till Phnom Penh (2 days and 250km).

We decided to drop off the cycles at the hotel and walk to the 'War Remnants Museum' and back to the Saigon Opera house as we had liked the feel of that square.

The museum had a shocking story to tell about the Vietnam war and the atrocities committed  on the humans and the landscape of Vietnam.... Millions of litres of the most toxic chemicals were sprayed from planes, 1000's of tons of bombs including napalm which burned everything. All this under the guise of stopping the spread of communism....

We walked to the Opera Square and there was a very festive atmosphere, people all dressed in their very best, lovely flower arrangements, water fountains, roadside stalls, local bamboo artisans. It was amazing being a part of all this. We walked to the riverside sat there for some time and headed back to the hotel. Took 'bunh mi' from a market and cup cakes, that was dinner. Had frozen yoghurt for a sweet dish and a fruit plate.

Day 12 (10th Feb 2013)

Day 12  /  10th Feb 2010

Got up early and started, skipped our bath as the water was cold and our towels would not dry. The next 5 kms we passed through a lovely patch of forest, gave us an idea of how the area would have been once upon a time. The next village was 7km away, it was mostly a christian town with Sunday morning mass at the churches. Picked up Bunh Mi on our way,which has become our daily breakfast now, stopped at a nice place for coffee and then were on our way.

The road was mostly undulating, had coconut water at our next stop as it was getting hot. After a particularly steep climb, we saw Kedar's cycle at a roadside stall, he has a glass of beer in front of him and was lazing on a hammock under the shade of some Singapore cherry trees. I and Rajoo decided to follow suit, promptly took off our wet tops and helmets and picked out our hammocks :-)  Felt very nice in the cool shade. We decided to rest till 2.30pm since we had already covered 70kms and had decided to stop within 40km of Saigon. So only had about 40kms or so to go. Lunch was maggie like noodles and eggs. The place was beautiful and so were the hostesses - a mother daughter combination was on their toes to serve. We lazed in our hammocks till 2.00pm then had coffee and got going. Covered about 45 kms till 5.30 pm. Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon ) was just 42 kms now, so decided to stay there and go to HCMC the next day early morning to avoid rush hour traffic. Found one Nha Nghi ( Hotel ) at 160000 Dongs - Rs.400 which was reasonably ok and we were the only customers in the entire hotel. The young owner was friendly, spoke reasonably good English and was eager to chat. Almost all the restaurants were closed due to Tet- new year. We found one open and it turned out very clean and nice. We had rice, eggs and boiled vegetables for the dinner. Returned back to the hotel and tried to open the room door which did not budge. Finally the boy at the reception opened it with a screw driver :-)  so much for safety.:-) :-)