Cambodia

Cambodia

What do you do when you get to a country and they have no functioning ATMs? Well we finally found some money and those clever Cambodians got a good chunk of it. The one site that we all wanted to go see was the ruins at Angkor Wat (wat=temple. We were faced with two transportation choices, the long and expensive boat, or the longer and more uncomfortable bus ride. We chose choice C, rent dirt bikes and make the 320km journey our way. At the bike rental shop they showed us the brakes, the gas and the clutch (What?! Clutch, ehh, we'll figure it out). We had previously rented mopeds in Thailand so we saw this as the next logical step in two wheeled adventure. The first day we made it to the town of Kompong Thom with one hour of daylight to spare. We still had another 170km to get to Angkor Wat which was too far that day but we wanted something to do with the remaining hour of daylight. Someone told us of some nearby ruins that predated those at Angkor so we set off to see them. Not long into the journey we stopped and received information of a shortcut from a friendly local rice farmer. He told us of the time it would save us and that sounded good to us and off we went. the road started off nice enough and then it narrowed to a dirt path large enough for two moped lanes. Not too long after that we encountered the first of about six bridges. By bridges, I mean un-nailed planks of wood placed on top of bamboo supports. What are ya gonna do, your in a third world country. We managed to make it across those and progressed down the dirt path. Then we saw it, a big raging river separating us from the ruins. We had fought those bikes so hard to make it to the ruins only to be stopped so close that we could see the ruins. While we were standing there scratching our heads we attracted quite a bit of attention from the locals. They may have been trying to tell us a way to get around the river but we neglected to buy a Cambodian phrase book and couldn't understand the many hand gestures. We then looked up at the sky to see that the darkness was on its way. We turned around and returned from whence we came. We were able to make better time on the way back given that we just rode over the same spots and then it happened......it started with a bit of thunder and then some lightning followed by the inevitable rains. We thought that the dirt path was hard, now we are dealing with a muddy path and wet slippery planks on all the bridges. Given our relative inexperience with the bikes we wrecked them quite a bit. Matt crashed his bike enough times that it refused to start. We all stopped and tried to fix it for about a half hour and for some unexplained reason it started up again so we all got on our bikes again. They thought that I was joking when I told that now my bike wouldn't start, unfortunately I wasn't. We made every attempt to fix my bike and eventually decided to just leave it up against a tree and to come back for it the next day. Now that I'm on foot trudging through the mud the progress was much slower on our retreat. Eventually we made it out of the worst part of it and got to a nice mud road. Ryan some how suckered me into getting on the back of his bike. With only a quarter of a mile to go we biffed on another slippery wooden bridge. Needless to say I was not happy! That was the last time any of us heard that engine running, despite the local mechanics best efforts to repair it. By best efforts I meat completely disassembling the bike, scratching their heads and then reassembling it (it felt like taking a Ferrari to a Yugo repairman). Ryan was left with no wheels and had to take his bike back to Phnom Penh in a minibus and then meet us up in Angkor ( Ryan still got some action because Matt was to wounded from his accidents to ride back). We spent a few days touring the ruins and then had to sprint back to Phnom Penh to get the bikes back on time (the whole length of the country in 5.5hrs). In Phnom Penh, we found a local military base that would let us play with their automatic weapons for a small fee. We checked out some surrounding city sights and then it was off to Viet Nam.

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