Asia by Hammock

That really sums up my thoughts while bike riding down a road in Phonm Penh (capital of Cambodia), with an ox cart careening down the other side, a motorbike passing me on my right and a car coming directly at me (honking its horn of course). That of course is an exaggeration, what we were going down was nothing even close to a road. Sure there were huge potholes, rocks scattered across the track and a bridge of questionable stability, but the real kicker of this road was that it is the rainy season in Cambodia. If the water hadn't been mixed with dirt, garbage and other dodgy things, you could have literally gone swimming in parts of the road. People were cultivating rice in the middle of intersections.

Business as usual for the residents of Phonm Penh. The semi trucks simply barrelled down the sidewalks, traffic zigged and zagged through the more passable sections of mud (only two or three inches deep) and the unlucky motorbike driver who got stuck simply laughed, smiled for a picture and went on his way. It was a phenomenal (get it?) bike ride.

This came on the heels of another wonderful (and only slightly less wet) trip: the river crossing from Vietnam into Cambodia. We took the slow boat (they have a way with words) from the Mekong Delta up to its confluence in Phonm Penh. It was quite a trip reading a book on the Vietnam war (Dispatches by Michael Herr for anyone who is interested), listening to the Stones and cruising up the Mekong. So imagine my surprise when I heard what could only be the whirr of a low flying chinook helicopter come to complete the Vietnam experience. Of course,
I have never heard a chinook helicopter and it was in fact a diesel engine on a fishing boat. It still completed a good Vietnam experience this one only 40 years later.

We're up at Angkor Wat (and by up I mean up at 4:45am for sunrises) and hopefully will have some pictures. Cheers

Steve (and in absentia Ed and Fran [an english girl who for some mysterious reason has decided that the two of us make good travelling partners])

# posted by Steve @ 11:39 AM