(written by Dave)

We were up early at the guesthouse.  I think we woke the staff up to get some brekkie fixed.  Another batch of banana pancakes fuelled us up a long day.  We stopped at the market on the way out of town for fresh baguettes and a bamboo rice tube.  The ride was generally flat all day, mostly along the Mekong or the farm lands around the river.  We rode along the Mekong from Kratie to Chlonng and then headed south from Chlonng until we met up with Hwy 7, which took us right into Kampong Cham.  Our progress was pretty slow though because we had so many distractions throughout the morning.

The first distraction was a wedding procession, walking down one side of the road.  We thought it might be a funeral at first and were worried that we could not (or should not) pass (in Thailand at least, you are not allowed to pass a funeral).  But other cars were passing so we did as well.  Just as we passed, the party reached the front yard of a river house and the wedding site.  We stopped to watch for a while.  The neighbours not invited had fun watching us, watching the wedding.  All the guests went in and sat down first, then the parents entered and exchanged silver boxes (dowry perhaps).  Next up it was time for the photographer to get the full wedding party in a few photos.  Just like western weddings, everything stops while the photographer gets the perfect shot.  They played here comes the bride followed by a lot of local music.  Still the photographer persisted so we left before the ceremony formally started.

The road near the wedding was along a Mekong river dike. Both sides of the road were lined with houses built on stilts.  Some of the houses were relatively fancy, others very basic.  Best we could tell, unless they had generators, none of the houses had power, not even the fancier ones.  There was lots of rice farming spread out towards the river and lower lands away from the houses.  They make use of the land as the water recedes throughout the dry season.  There was even a soccer pitch that had rice planted right in the goal square.  They were taking out the seedlings for transplanting so maybe they clear the field for a January season.

The road along the dike was very scenic and pretty quiet other than the crazy minivan taxi/bus drivers.  As we noticed in the north, here also the horn is the preferred brake.  No point in slowing down when you can scare the fellow users off the road.  We got a few honks but we generally stayed on the edge of the road and rode in a straight line.  The school kids, scooters and horse-drawn carts don’t go as straight and get lots of toots.  This road was only paved within the last two years – given the speed of the cars that drive along the road we wondered if the villagers were glad it was paved or wished for their old dirt road back.

We left the river at Chlonng but stayed in farm land.  We went south here to stay on reported sealed roads.  We succeeded for the most part, only having potholes to contend with.  We met a cyclist in Kratie yesterday who said he was riding here via the river road and taking a chance on the dirt road.  On arrival in Kampong Cham we met a motor cycle rider who said the dirt road was horrible.  We’ve not heard how our cycling friend fared.

Our route had lots of one lane metal bridges, and normally it would make sense that the first car on has the right of way but remember that bikes are not cars.  We had to squeeze by a couple of cars that couldn’t be bothered waiting for us to clear the bridge coming at them, smiling all the way.  On the road near the bridges there were several sets of rumble strips, apparently to slow people down but I don’t think they had any effect other than rattling and shaking cyclists and scooter riders.

After one bridge we stopped to gather ourselves and noticed that the roadside stall had some interesting products for sale.  We were not sure at first if they were snakes or eels but in truth, it was hard to look at them and to still keep our brekkie down.  We eventually settled on snakes but did not work up enough courage to try them.  Sorry to the squeamish readers for the photos below, bad as they may look, the photos are missing the putrid smell so consider yourselves lucky.  Other roadside vendors had a slightly more palatable option, sugar cane juice.  We’ve seen these all over SE Asia and we finally stopped to try one.  I’m not sure how we’ve missed them so far because they are great.  The stall owner put some fresh orange in ours and it hit the spot.  Throw in a few morning market doughnuts and we had a fantastic morning tea.

Eventually we joined back up on highway 7 and the main road now to Phnom Penh.  Traffic was heavier and much noisier.  Here it would appear that drivers don’t even really need a reason to honk, they just pretty much honk all the time.  We had a slight crosswind now and were getting tired.  Nothing like having a truck horn in your ear in this state.  The road was not great at first but eventually a shoulder appeared and we had plenty of room to avoid the honking drivers.  We crossed back over the Mekong and came into the town of Kampong Cham.  There is an old French lighthouse on the point where the bridge takes off.  It clearly has no purpose now but they say it is interesting to climb.

We had no trouble finding our hotel, after a quick stop for lunch at the Mekong Cafe.  We are in the Mekong Hotel with a room/balcony looking out over the river.  Our arrival was greeted by a group of school kids playing music and performing a dance routine.  They were pretty young but very enthusiastic.  The little girls did a line dance and sang a catchy tune in Khmer.  Ok, they may have been doing this even if we had not arrived, but I’m sticking to the story that it was for us.  It was a long day, certainly worth some sort of celebration.

Once we settled into the hotel I went back out to investigate what was happening on the waterfront.  A large number of the small local boats were docked side by side.  At first I thought it was a floating market but eventually I figure out that these small boats were fishermen and that they were bringing they daily catch up to the roadside to sell in a mini auction.  I’m pretty sure that this happens every day as there was a good crowd of boats and buyers.  The fishermen (and their families) appeared to be living on these small boats, as there were full families and many household items, and lots of kids.

We eventually worked our way to the Smile Cafe for dinner.  This cafe started to help orphans or potential street kids and is a really great story.  There are currently 15 kids working here that work for two years, then graduate to jobs in the industry.  Most of the kids are 17-18 years old and you guessed it, they all have great smiles.  The food was good as well, I’m sure that we’ll have a few meals here in the coming days.  Today, after serving Nancy her ice cream, they ran out before they got to mine.  Nancy did not share hers. [Editor’s note – it was melting quickly so had to be eaten fast, honest].  The cafe was developed by a Cambodian run NGO organised by the monks in a local wat.  You can read the story about the organisation at www.bsda-cambodia.org.

So, we’ll be here for a couple days.  We have 128k to go to meet Gretchen on Sunday in Phnom Penh.  There are no obvious places to stop in between so we’ll make one big push on Sunday.  There appears to be plenty to do here in town and should all else fail, we have HBO, in English, on the TV in our room.

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