Guest blogger Ruth Parke cycle touring in South East Asia:

Guest blogger Ruth Parke cycle touring in Cambodia, South East Asia

2 massive bus hops got us across Cambodia stopping at Siem Reap, to explore the Angkor complex by bike, and a few days later at Phnom Penh. The poverty in Cambodia, after years of civil war and devastation of the population by the Khmer rouge, was immediately evident. The roads are in a poor state and 70% of Cambodia’s population is without a toilet. It has the lowest rate of toilet coverage in S.E. Asia.  Stopping at a roadside village to use the loo could mean a squat toilet in a shed at the back or the loan of a ‘toilet wrap’ to swat in the field.

Day 1 –Siem Reap

Once in Siem Reap we took possession of our Cambodian bikes. Battered, well-worn but functional (who does that remind you of?) they took a bit of adjusting to after the Rolls-Royces of Thailand.  We took a 16 km ride to the outskirts of the town and back to get used to cycling on non-rural roads, in preparation for Vietnamese traffic!

My tips for cycling in Siem Reap:

• Assume all moped drivers are blind. This increases confidence immeasurably
• If in doubt, close your eyes and pedal faster.

On the edge of town was a market with stall after stall selling street food. Locals sat picnicking on mats next to the stalls and between piles of rubbish – there is a lot of rubbish in Cambodia.

Siem Reap has benefitted/ suffered (depending on your viewpoint) from the gap year industries’ commercialisation and shift from India to S.E. Asia over recent decades. The town is dotted with relatively smart hotels and at the heart of the city is the night market bordering the beating heart of “Pub Street” (yes – really) where 20-somethings can get pissed for next-to-nothing, sing karaoke and watch dancing girls perform. Only dancing here, but clearly there is a more ‘colourful’/’ grey’ (depending on your viewpoint) industry just behind the scenes.

Day 2- Angkor 

Angkor (‘city’), although best known for its Wat (‘temple’), was the seat of the Khmer empire from the 9th -15th centuries. It stretches over an area of forest and farmland covering approx. 400km2. There are over 1000 temple ruins ranging from piles of brick rubble scattered through rice fields to the magnificent Angkor Wat. Travelling through this area by bike is ideal as it is possible to go off road, as we did. Cycling along dirt tracks across bumpy fields and jumping tree roots added just the right amount of fear to be exciting. I was never quite sure if I would go over the roots on my bike or hit the roots and go over the handlebars.

Our first stop was Ta Prohm originally built, in the 12th century, as a Buddhist monastery and university. Its most distinctive features are the trees growing out of, around, over and into the ruins like melted candle wax, so that the temple is a fusion of living and non-living structures. Next we rode to Angkor Thom (‘Great city’) before cycling on to Angkor Wat. There have been some wonderful descriptions of Angkor Wat, so I won’t attempt one here. Suffice to say that magnificent, awe-inspiring, beautiful, sublime, majestic, breath-taking, stunning will all do the job.

Day 3– Temple of Banteay Srei 

It had to be done – we took a tuk tuk at 5.30 a.m. to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. We arrived in pitch darkness and then waited….and waited………………and waited. It slowly grew lighter before the sun appeared dazzlingly behind one of the towers.

Today’s ride was a 70 km round trip out to the 10th century temple of Banteay Srei , also known as the Citadel of the Women. It has been described as a “jewel in Khmer art” and is renowned for its intricate decoration, carved in pinkish sandstone, which covers the walls like tapestry.

 The road out to the temple, despite being tarmacked, was worn and bumpy which resulted in a perpetual vibration running through my hands and shoulders. At last we reached a beautifully smooth stretch, a welcome respite for the backside, but it only lasted for about 500m. Despite the slight discomfort, the road was green and tree-lined; the prettiest of our rides in Cambodia. We cycled through the village of Phoum Pradak where the road was lined with many stalls, all selling sugar palm products including palm sugar sweets made using traditional techniques. It is difficult to know how the passing traffic, of which there was little, could support so many stalls all selling the same things.

Day 4 - Phnom Penh

It took 7 hours driving time to cover 300 km from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, which is an indication of the state of the main road. In some places fairly smooth tarmac, in others a wide dusty potholed track which made speeds above 10mph impossible. This was an opportunity to look. The road was dusty and lined with villages made up of bamboo-framed houses on stilts, their thatched-palm roofs scorching in the sun, tucked between tropical vegetation with piles of rubbish strewn everywhere.

It is easy to observe surroundings whist travelling by bus as there is no need to be watching out for traffic. On a bus you see; on a bike you feel. While cycling, the sense of being at one with the surroundings, literally part of the scenery is uplifting in a way that travelling in a vehicle can never be. Already we were missing the bikes.

Phnom Penh, once considered to be the loveliest of Indochina's French-built cities, sprawls at the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers.  In 1975 it was choked with up to 2 million refugees from the war between the government and the Khmer Rouge. The city fell to the Khmer Rouge, who completely emptied it of civilians and allowed it to crumble for several years.  Despite being liberated from the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese in 1979, it has long remained a bit rough. The beauty that made it a 'Paris of the East' before 1970 is well hidden, though there are a few French colonial buildings and traces of the Khmer and colonial eras can be found in the little details. The local fruit and veg market was masked by the stench of rotting meat and rubbish emanating from the large piles just behind the stalls in the squalid backstreets. Here is total squalor in which the latest new and shiny smartphones were being sold from a nearby street kiosk. There is an edginess about the place that makes night walks in the backstreets inadvisable.

Day 5 –what, no bikes?

There was the scent of celebration in the air and roads were packed with traffic leaving the city for New Year festivities. There was no celebrating for us though as we took the bus to a dusty street on the outskirts of Phnom Penh to visit S-21, a former school which was used as a torture, execution and interrogation centre by the Khmer Rouge in 1976. Today, S-21 Prison is known as the Museum of Genocide The Khmer Rouge carefully photographed the majority of inmates and today the walls are papered with thousands of these haunting images. The museum was sombre and shocking, not only because it is a symbol of the extent to which humanity can be lost but also because we know it can happen so easily, anywhere, given the ‘right’ conditions.

About 17 km south of Phnom Penh , is the best-known of the sites known as The Killing Fields. Mass graves containing 8,895 bodies were discovered at Choeung Ek, the site of a former orchard. Today, Choeung Ek is a memorial, marked by a Buddhist stupa containing 17 tiers of bones including over 5000 skulls which had been collected from the mass graves excavated in the fields. These now appear as large bowls in the ground. In places it was possible to see bits of bone and clothing at the surface as the rains continue to bring up more pieces. The Killing fields were somehow even more shocking, perhaps because the countryside was so lush, green and beautiful and yet masked events so horrific.

Later that day we stumbled upon the Foreign correspondents club (FCC) which was the meeting place and base of operations for many journalists, and a haven during the days of the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia. From this club came the dispatches detailing the initial atrocities; journalists and ex-pats gathered here also for evacuation from the country when it became dangerous for foreigners and from here journalists filed the news of Pol Pot's final stand in the jungle.
I still hold on to a romantic notion of travel and so was delighted by the Lillian Smith quote written large on a wall of the FCC:
“No journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within”.