Actually, what is it like bike touring in Cambodia?

Roads, sleeping, and food and water, are the main and daily dishes of bicycle touring.

What are these like in Cambodia?

Cambodian roads?
Unlike Thailand, where we had probably at least one dog menacingly bark and gallop after us each day, we have not crossed a single frightening dog here in Cambodia. In fact, the dogs generally look much sleeker, more content, and decidedly more unmotivated than in Thailand, and there are certainly more puppies. We're wondering if Cambodians aren't in fact eating the mean and mangy ones, or maybe dogs are simply just nicer here.

Lately we are riding National Highway 3. You may think 4 lanes and marked rest-stops but this is not the case. A bumpy 2-lane program, with by far the most numerous travelers being ancient cruiser-type bicycles and motor-scooters. Loaded trucks, loaded vans (the tailgates down, packages hanging out over the road, strapped to the open rear door), and the rare and unexpectedly fancy Lexi and Land rovers (corruption money I reckon, from my reading) do zoom past. When these bigger vehicles roar through, their drivers heave-ho on the horns, blaring and honking--irritating noise pollution--alerting the minions "I am big and coming through and you'd better move it."

Someone had asked in a comment whether Cambodians drive on the left or the right. I can answer, yes: at any given time they are driving on the left or the right. This is a new driving culture, people are making up rules as they go; it's like a bunch of toddlers playing with canons. There is no concept of passing distance. I watched in horror a sedan passing a coconut truck passing a motor-bike. Somehow the oncoming cement truck managed to be out of the way of all this. I keep very alert in this mess and am ready to jump into the shoulder as needed.

Even though this is a National Highway, we enjoy times of peace and space, pedaling past cows grazing in dry rice paddies and those small huts on stilts.



Sleeping? 
We are not sleeping on a brick anymore. The Cambodians, unlike the Thais, have a penchant for obligingly soft beds. Guest houses have been in the range of $5 to $10 per night for us both. Rooms have been mostly clean, sometimes with pleasing little details like bright blue satiny sheets or towels folded like flowers. If the rooms are stocked with toilet paper we shout in rejoicing--this is rare--but they often do have sinks which drain directly onto the bathroom floor, us stamping about in a puddle to brush teeth. They do supply free toothbrushes and two sealed bottles of water. Showers are usually cold, which is good and welcome and refreshing. 

After checking into our room, soon every jut-like fixture becomes a hook or hanging rack for hand-washed bike clothing.


Food? 
No standardized 7-Elevens--and certainly no super-markets--exist like in Thailand for easy snacks. Not that I want to be eating packaged food from chain-stores, but buying a yogurt--knowing it was refrigerated, heck, even knowing that it was a yogurt--was certainly comforting amongst all the confusing food items.

At restaurants there are rarely menus. Because we don't have words for the foods we happen to prefer, we're taken back to the kitchen area to point at the bowls of uncooked food, and hope for the best. I ate beef soup for breakfast this morning. The beef I'm sure was local and grass-fed and free-range, ranging far and wide definitely, I could tell from the chewing. Chicken also perplexes us; the meat is often served without discernible "pieces" (no legs, thighs, etc), instead it has been whaled at heedlessly with a cleaver so that every bite might include a bone shard.

But this is a country that has only recently come out of a desperate and despicable tragedy; there should be no expectation of a nuanced and complex food culture. People have food; being a fussy American preferring something like beef rather than pork is not something that people understand. This is a good lesson in acceptance and release for me. I have eaten very well here, for even $2, enjoying the sweet-spicy sauces and fresh green vegetables and doing my best with the perplexing meat. I enjoy the adventures of trying new cuisines, buying incomprehensible snacks, and tackling exotic fruits.

At almost every establishment, Mrs. Cook wheels us out a veritable wheelbarrow of white rice. Buddy Lissy and I watch it approaching in horror, and do our best to gesture that we only want a little rice. We split a "small" rice between the two of us, which is plenty and leaves us both stuffed.

Just as the chicken shards surprised me, I was likewise surprised by a baggy of squat little cakes I purchased roadside today. But in a good way. Eating it, I was 10 years old again at my birthday party, with my mother's angel food cake. Light and spongy and not too sweet. Delicious. I had another one with some Khmer-style coffee: which is melted coffee ice cream essentially. Dark coffee with more-sweetened-condensed-milk-than-I-care-to-know-about. But oo-weee yum.