Travels with Hayley

Up and in my tuk tuk at 7.30 today complete with driver that looked suspiciously like Gagnam Style singer Psy!

We drove 5 minutes down the road towards the ferry terminal where we met our guide Pis (big fan of Manchester City apparently, nice to have a change from Man U fans abroad at least!) and the other 4 people on the tour today – a couple of Australians in their early twenties and a slightly older couple originally from Laos, lived in San Francisco for 40 years and currently residing in Shanghai – at least I think I’ve got that right…

We got fitted for our bikes and helmets and then it was announced we had to cycle to the ferry – down a super busy main road. I was expecting all cycling to be done on sleepy little country roads so this was a bit of a shock! It only took about 2 minutes but it seemed like forever.

The ferry was teeming with cars and mopeds and looked ancient but it did it’s job and we got to the the first island on our tour still afloat. We rode through winding countryside, little towns with shops bursting out onto the road and down some pretty ropey dirt roads. At points the guide made us get off the bikes and walk the worst bits – I’m pretty sure this was mainly for my benefit but it was nice he didn’t single me out!

After a while of riding we pulled into the front yard of a large house – all the houses out in the country are built up on stilts so they they can work underneath – this family ran a small silk weaving workshop with everything made by hand. It looked so laborious and very manual – a week to make a sarong! They served us some snacks which was excellent as I hadn’t had time for breakfast as the pick up had been early to arrive. There was lots of fruit – best were the mangosteens (the deep red skins with segmented white insides in the photo) and longans (the smallish round yellow fruits) which are like extra sweet lychees. Then there were the sweet snacks and again very surprisingly I actually liked them all! They were all based on sticky rice, some ground into a paste and some whole rice, mixed variously with pumpkin (the best), jackfruit, coconut and banana and steamed in banana leaves. Then there were palm cakes (the round ones) which were made from some derivative of the palm tree – I could not understand the explanation of this and there’s only so many times you can ask so we’ll all have to live in ignorance I’m afraid!

Off on the bikes again, past fields growing bananas, mangos, lemongrass and coconuts. The guide informed us of the many, many medicinal and other uses of lemongrass which included snake repellant and using the leaves as a splint for broken chicken’s legs. I’m sorry, I do not believe this is a thing! Who is splinting a chicken 😂

The American guy was very sweet and kept looking back at me as I was bringing up the rear and shouting back asking I was ok – it was very much like going for a bike ride with dad! While I was ok with the actual riding, the saddle was an instrument of torture – I wasn’t the only one that felt that way, some of us had to take painkillers halfway around it was so bad! We rode a bit further through some little towns, what felt like hundreds of children ran out barefoot into the road to shout ‘hello hello’ and wave at us, it was so lovely. I only wish I could have prised my white knuckled hands from the handlebars to wave back 😂 I shouted hello back a lot to make up for it. A few unscheduled stops for cows in the road (they are so different from ours, so boney and with really long floppy ears like a spaniel!) and for some kids flying their kites.

We also rode through some kind of festival or the like, I had to dismount and walk through and by the time I got to the junction the rest of the group had disappeared! Thank goodness the nice American guy had clocked what had happened and was yelling for me 100 yards up the road – the guide was nowhere to be seen 🙄

We jumped onto another ferry to the next island – silk island. Famous for – you guessed it – making silk. We stopped at a beautiful temple and Pis told us all about how boys in Cambodia become monks and have to go into the village each day to ask the villagers for food – the reward the villagers get for this is the monks prayers and good karma essentially. He also told us about celebrations and festivals like new years where the villagers have to deliver balls of sticky rice to the temple at 4.30am every day for 15 days to feed the ‘hungry ghosts’. This is a hot country, that can’t smell great at the end of 15 days, let’s hope the ghosts clean up after themselves!

They also play a game at that time of year called ‘Hit the Pot’ which is basically like a piñata. If you don’t break the pot on your turn you have to dance like a monkey and walk like a duck (he didn’t specify how long for – until January 1st?!) One for Christmas maybe mum 😜

Next stop was to watch some more silk being made and an attempt to make us buy scarves – they were very pretty but I don’t think I’d wear a silk scarf printed with scenes of Cambodia when I get back to the UK so I resisted their persuasive sales patter and left empty handed.

What felt like many, many miles in the saddle later was a temple for female monks. 8 of them live there and it’s a very odd, deserted feeling space with giant Buddha statues, elephant sculptures, prayer houses and the like just scattered at random around a large, empty feeling site. Even odder, everything was so ornate bar the temple itself which looked like a dilapidated church hall!

Female monks/nuns can start there from age 20 (unlike male monks who can join the order as children). The ladies don’t have to go into the village daily for food, the villagers bring it directly to them. They’ve got that sorted haven’t they, much better system. No men and food delivered to your door, sounds alright!

By this point I was genuinely in a lot of pain and really struggling, so were a couple of the others. We soldiered on but moods had dipped somewhat and the questions we were asking the guide had changed from in depth wonderings about Cambodia’s history to very much more along the lines of ‘are we nearly there yet?!’ We weren’t nearly there, we had to detour to see a giant sleeping Buddha – somewhat sadly it was covered in bamboo scaffolding on arrival – no one could work up much enthusiasm for it at that point!

Next we stopped at a homestead that was making soy skin – this is where you boil soy milk until a skin forms on the top, then you skim the skin off and dry it. It’s used as an ingredient in a lot of Chinese cooking apparently. It was all very rustic, cauldrons over open fires and the guy was touching it with his hands way too much for my liking!

With the cycling equivalent of limping along we finally made it to lunch overlooking the river and joy of joys, there were hammocks! I leapt in one, never so glad of a lay down and to take the weight off of my more delicate areas!

After a lunch of rice, stir fry beef, vegetables and sour soup with great chunks of bony chicken in (sorry Martin, I just couldn’t eat it 😂) included in the tour price, and a sprite that wasn’t but that the nice American couple insisted on paying for (I suspect I was looking quite sad and pathetic by this point 😂), we begrudgingly got back on the bikes and cycled to the ferry which we made with seconds to spare, speeding up the ramp as they pulled it up behind us!

The ferry docked at a different port on the way back, fortunately the return tuk tuk was included in the tour price as it was miles away, took about half an hour to get back which was brilliant as we sped through every type of neighbourhood and I got some serious people watching in! Among many, many interesting sights I saw a huge shop just selling coffins!

Back in the city and I walked straight down the road for a restorative sugar cane juice and then headed back to the hotel. My room mate had arrived – unfortunately she’d gone out and taken the room key with her – and the hotel staff who are very smiley but really fairly useless insisted there was only one key. To be honest, I lost my sense of humour at this point – I was filthy dirty, sweaty and hurting so badly I was wondering if I’d ever be able to sit down again! My work voice came out – another key was magically produced and the door opened…😳

When she arrived back the poor woman was mortified, she had no idea there would only be one key (and why would you, how ridiculous is that as a policy!) and she seems absolutley lovely – Australian, bit older, maybe 60’s or so? We chatted loads last night and in the end had to table a load of topics of conversation so we could both get some sleep!

We had the welcome meeting at 6 and met the rest of the group, there’s 11 of us – one 25 year old, one lady and one guy about my age (he lives in South Norwood, how mad is that!) and the rest are around retirement age. Everyone seems great so far (I have to say that in case they find this and read it haha!) and we all went out for a group dinner where I had crab fried rice which was very nice. Me and Sarah – 25, Australian, let the younger contingent down as we were the first to leave and go back to hotel at 8.30 but I was shattered from all the stressful cycling to be fair 😂

Tomorrow is the traumatic morning, genocide museum and killing fields. It’s important to do but I’m looking forward to getting it over with if you know what I mean. There’s also some kind of optional activity that I think might include a bike – absolutely not happening so we’ll see what the alternative to that is!

Hope everyone is well – by the way, if you leave comments on here, can you sign your name on the message please – I’m having to do a bit of guess work haha!!

Lots of love always xxx