Tuesday, 8 April 2014

The Mekong Islands cycling tour

Originally when I planned my trip to Cambodia, I signed up for a 3 day cycling tour that would pass through the countryside from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap.  About a month before the trip, I found out that I was the only person signed up to go, so they cancelled the tour and instead I signed up for a day tour in each city.  

The night before the tour, I could hear it raining on the tin roof outside the hotel.  It was dreary and not promising when I woke up, but was only drizzling when I made it to the tour office.  There were five of us signed up for the tour and they did offer to reschedule for the next day, but we all opted to go ahead even if we got a little wet.  

Our guide was a lovely young Cambodian woman, Amom. She spoke great English and had an enthusiasm for showing us her country.  We started by riding through Phnom Penh to a ferry across the River. I wish I could tell you whether we were crossing the Mekong River or the Tonle Sap River, but they converge just next to the city and I'm not sure which it was at the point we crossed.  Ah well!  

A view of the type of ferry we were on...they were pretty rustic!  This was the one crossing the other way.

Our bikes parked on the ferry.  We sat inside and it only took about 15 minutes to cross.  On both sides the entrance to the boat itself was a ramp, but I use that word "ramp" loosely. It was just a dirt path and since it had rained, it was a mud pit. My shoes were covered immediately and we watched several cars struggle to get on and off because of the mud!

Most of the riding part of the day was on dirt roads that looked like this:

Our first stop was at an elementary school.  We peeked into a class of about 15 kids who may have been 6-7 years old.  Amom clearly knew the teacher and allowed us to listen while the kids did some counting. Two of the ladies in our tour had purchased some fancy pencils at the market to hand out at a school and so we all took a few to give away. 

The school building itself was a series of classrooms around an open courtyard. The kids wore a basic uniform of white shirts and blue shorts or skirts.  

 That's our guide Amom with the red backpack on - I'll show a better photo of her in a later post. And more to come on the rest of our ride...

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