On arrival at the ferry crossing, Erika was fully expecting to see P.O Ferries turn up, so she could enjoy a Latte on one of the upper decks, reading the Sunday papers. Well as she is a relative non- swimmer, the prospect of getting on a raft, held together with every available means of rope, was daunting to say the least! But we did have calm waters and a slow engine on our side, to ensure the experience passed without incident, and before long we were back on dry land waiting for the 9am bus south.
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| this is not the P.O Princess |
With one bike loaded underneath and the second down the central gang way we were on our way, until something on the bus fell off! It was obviously an important part as he headed straight to the nearest garage. At this point and 20km from the border, the bikes were the best option, and to the envy of the other dozen westerners onboard, we loaded the bikes and said our goodbyes.
At the border, the first challenge was finding someone to stamp our exit visa, so after opening many doors of the immigration huts, i finally found three officers asleep on the floor. Having awoken them with my clumsy entrance, they proceeded to action the paper work. Next step was Cambodian entry, this started with a health test, with a thermometer placed against our necks... 35d perfect, considering we had just cycled 20km in burning heat, and were sweting like pigs, i was a little surprised, but paid the one dollar for the privilege and continued to the next counter and more forms + $20 each visa entry. All in all it was relatively painless for such an remote outback crossing, and no scams.
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| anyone at home ? |
Into Cambodia we went, and 300m down the road, we had the least pleasant welcome party, with 4 dogs chasing us for a few hundred meters yapping at our heals. During our time in both Vietnam and Laos, we had no problems with dogs, as i suspect they are very used to people on bikes. As this experience was a little scary, we decided to 'arm up' incase of further attacks, by loading the bikes with a few heavy stones. Our new defence mechanism was soon put to the test with a dog running at us from a house, and started snarling and chasing us again, but was soon stopped in its tracks by the scud stones. Luckily the next 50km passed without further dog incidents, so we hope these were a just couple of isolated cases!
The next 35km passed without reportable incident, until the sky started to darken ahead of us, and we could see a lot of fork lightning. We had about 5km to the next small town, so it was full speed ahead to avoid the storm. However a further 2km down the road the winds picked up and the rain started, light at first, turning into monsoon type conditions. We had no choice as riding was now impossible, but to take shelter at someones house. There we were welcomed by the owners and we met up with some other local strays who also got caught in the storm. This was a huge storm, with loads of fork lightning and as we later found out many small tornado's touching down !, and all electricity lost across the region.
We spent the next hour under there house, the locals were completely undisturbed by the storm, but saw this as an opportunity to have a bath, so off came the clothes out came the soap and out they all went.
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| At least the water melon is good |
One hour later after trying watermelon straight from the field, we decided to make a run for it, to get to Stung Treng by complete blackness, and the thought of a potential home stay in this barn, made up our mind.
The next 10k would have been in Olympic qualification time, and Bradley would have been proud. But the last 5km was cycling blind in the total blackness, with the white line in the middle of road as our only guide.
Anyway after setting off 12 hours previous we arrived in Stung Treng, found guest house, ate and bed, completely crackered.
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