Microlight over Cambodia

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Arrived at the airstrip on a grey and cloudy morning. The cloud base was only a few hundred feet and as we had to fly at around 400ft it was touch and go as to whether we would get off the ground. Eddie, the pilot, is an American who has lived in Cambodia for over 10 years. Despite his doubts over whether we could fly or not he wheeled the microlight out of the hangar and went through his preflight checks. At that point we decided to give it a go, if the cloud closed in we would simply turn back and that would be that. Eddie strapped me in and climbed in front, gunned the engine and announced over the headset that as there had been a lot of rain in the night we would use up almost all of the short runway. I suspect it was his polite way of saying he had a fat bastard on board. The runway was plenty long enough and we were soon cruising at around 110km/h a few hundred feet off the ground. The countryside looked like a crazy patchwork with the green of the rice fields contrasting with the brown of those being ploughed, some by oxen, some with Chinese made 2-wheeled tractors. We flew past the Rolous group of temples and headed towards Angkor Wat but the weather was closing fast. Eddie said he was happy flying as long as he could see the ground but this was the lowest cloud base he had flown a passenger in. As we got closer to Angkor Wat the cloud came in around us and the ground disappeared from view. At that point Eddie thankfully turned us around and a few minutes later was radioing Siem Reap control tower to say we were returning to base. Despite the cloud making it impossible to see Angkor Wat, the flight is still one of the highlights of the trip so far. The remainder of the day was spent wandering through the markets and around Pub St, the tourist Hotspot. A fishy footspa topped of the day.

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Comments

[Wayne Seegers]

Flying!
This is so cool!!

[Wayne Seegers]

Would love to have done this!