Cambodia

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Cambodia Day3. Angkor.

Up at 6am. Breakfast at 6.30 and away at 7.45. Warm, sunny start onto the chaotic roads full of litter, dust, bricks, bikes, scooters, remorques pulling all sorts of people and goods. The remorques are scooters pulling trailers with the coupling over the rear of the saddle. Whilst the roads were of potholed tarmac it got worse with pure dirt and holes which would lose a dog in and then soft sand which could make your front wheel go to places not intended. Several single tracks were also encountered with. Varying degrees of intricacy to test the best of riders. The Angkor temples were visited after buying a three day ticket for $65US. The temples were built between the 9th and 15th centuries and were then left to decay until relatively recently and are now a major money spinner for the Cambodian economy with visitors in the millions each year. Almost every stone has carvings which are very intricate and detailed with many smiling faces. Angkor Wat has 36 towers, each having 4 faces all having different smiles. I didn’t know that there could be that many. We took several good photographs with several faces one one shot and many more until we became templed to distraction. At about 2pm I began to suffer from the lack of sleep and peaked in a big way so curtailed the Angkor Wat tour and went to the cafe for half a cup of lukewarm coffee until the group came back. Another 4 km of cycling back to base and a clean up before blog writing, showering and eating dinner. Again an excellent Cambodian meal. Let’s hope this continues for the next two weeks.

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