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