Day 16 - Siem Reap the final chapter

Yesterday was  spent by the pool, soaking our aching limbs, and to complete the tour Dave and Shereen arrived late afternoon by taxi !

Last night we enjoyed our first real beer in over two weeks, to celebrate Dave's birthday.

Today, it was a bit of a 'Busmans' holiday, as we cycled 30km around Anchor Wat, Bayon,

Anchor Thom and Ta Prohm the legendary Tomb Raider temple which was our favourite.

Dave and Shereen had a taste of what it was like cycling out here, and they both are now struggling to sit down, and Dave looked liked he needed mouth to mouth, but no volunteers.

So today was officially the end of the tour, we have a further few days travelling around Cambodia by car, before flying home.

The tour has been real experience, seen some amazing things, tasted some wonderful and sometimes strange foods, had some real challenges on the bikes, especially from Hoi An to Po Y on the Laos border, seen sheer poverty which is very humbling, been welcomed and cheered throughout the whole adventure, by very friendly people.

As a Project Manager, i couldn't finish without some 'lessons learnt'....realistically , 50-80km is the most you can comfortably achieve in a day. With 20kg weight on each bike 20-25  km/hr is a good pace, but after a few hours cycling this can drop to 15km / hr. Thru Vietnam, where you have many 10% hills, your distance can reduce to 5km / hr.  Also the only time you can comfortably maintain any pace, is from 5am first light til 10am, as soon as the sun is high in the sky it becomes tough, very tough!

Lastly, thanks to everybody who followed us over the last 2.5 weeks on the Blog, the comments and sheer numbers of hits from over 20 different countries were the motivation we often needed to keep us going. So til the next one ....... we both say goodbye.

party time