第854期:Cambodia Road Trip 2

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Julia: I'd say at least half, maybe more than half were unpaved roads. Thankfully Cambodia is very flat so it wasn't so difficult. We averaged about seventy, eighty kilometers a day but on some days it was like thirty-five degrees so it was hot, so we'd try to leave at around six o'clock in the morning. A lot of mornings we saw the sunrise. We'd grab some breakfast at a roadside market or something, noodles that kind of stuff and so the roads were unpaved and the dirt in Cambodia is very red. It's like a red clay and...

Todd: But very dusty though right?

Julia: Very dusty so we had to wear scarves round our faces. When we arrived in the evenings at our destination, we were absolutely filthy and I always looked at myself and thought wow I've got such a great tan today and then I got out of the shower and realized it was all dirt, completely dirt, so we'd have to, yeah, a lot of Cambodians, I think it's called a krama, it's a kind of scarf they were around the mouth and when they travel in the back of trucks and things because the dust is phenomenal.

Todd: The dust in some ways might have helped with maybe sun protection from the rays? Did you find that because you were covered in dust that may be like you didn't get sunburn?

Julia: I did put a lot of sunscreen on every day because I was worried about that and perhaps it did protect us yeah in that way. It just made us dirtier.

Todd: So what did the locals think? So you're driving through this, you know Cambodia is a very rural country.

Julia: It is and we chose some of the most rural areas because we wanted to see some of the more picturesque areas. I mean it's stunning, the landscape there was stunning. There's a word in Cambodian language for foreigners which is barang and we got very used to hearing this word. Kids would come running across the fields shouting barang, barang, barang and they'd line the roads and they'd be going hello, hello, hello, I love you, I love you, hello, hello, so we got used to this waving and cheering. I think they probably thought we looked like from another planet because we were on these quite high-tech mountain bikes, laden with front and rear panniers. We had some film equipment with us. A friend of ours had put a bracket on the front of his handlebars with a camera on it and we often would have our iPods, our digital cameras out. They probably had never seen anything like us coming through and then when we'd stop at this roadside kind of cafes, we'd just lie our bikes down beside the road and they'd all come round but they were so polite and courteous and very reserved people. They never touched any of our stuff. They were always very respectful and I had a very positive experience. Before we went there, I met quite a few people, quite a few Cambodians even who said you can't do it, it's dangerous, you know you can't do it, you're going to get robbed, there are bandits. It's going to be really dangerous and we didn't encounter a single danger and in the whole two months, six riders, we had one puncture in the whole time. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.

Todd: You only had one flat tire?

Julia: One flat tire, that was it, one and we had no problems with the bikes.

Todd: And these are bumpy roads.

Julia: Bumpy roads, yeah, we were blessed. We actually went and had a blessing in a Buddhist temple before we set out and the monk blessed us and blessed us for safe travel, blessed our bikes and that was a nice ritual to do before we embarked on the, but it worked.

Todd: That's fantastic.

Julia: Yeah.