A Floating Village

Got off the highway for a bumpy and dusty diversion down this dirt way, heading to the floating village on the Tonle Sap lake.

The floating village in the background. Due to land rights issues, some people opt out by living on boats in the lake, a "floating village." Floating police stations, floating restaurants. The surrounding area was absolutely trashed: plastic bags, bottles, broken toys, dying plant material. The water around the boats was gray and brown, both a toilet and the children's swimming pool. The life expectancy in floating villages is 60 years old. This place was so appallingly filthy it made the rest of Cambodia look like tidy civilization (astonishing).

We were as curious about the village as these boys were of us.

The Sandwich Calcium Cracker and other photos

Country-side section of the National Road 3 south of Phnom Penh. Cows munch in the waiting rice paddies during the dry season.

 

 

The sun rises through it all in capitol city Phnom Penh Sunday morning.

Doggedly making it through traffic, with some exhaust protection, in Phnom Penh.

Her Nia. I'm assuming it treats His Nia too.

Our bikes are behaving like cats here, nosing up in the ironing. "Let's just lock the bikes to this big table," we'd said in the ground floor of our guest house, returning later to find this scene. Turned out to be their ironing board!

Mmmmmm Calcium Cracker. Made by Lexus, too. We are staying tonight in the town of "Krakor", which I am sure is not at all related.

Very classic roadside scene. Motorbikes and burning garbage, with the less common loveliness from golden creatures and flowers (these were more common in Thailand).

Buddha goes for a ride.

I laughed out loud watching this balloon guy sway all billowy through traffic.

The only sign needed for Cambodian roads.

Cambodians load their vehicles beyond imaginable capacity. And check out that motorbike at the very back.

Surely not vanilla

We woke this morning under the full golden moon still in the sky, so that we might brave the mess of the capitol city of Phnom Penh with a chance of it being less appalling. We'd been hoping to avoid the city entirely, but all roads going around it were unpaved. And that would mean jostly, gritty, bouncy, with everything coated in red dust afterward.

So we rode in on National Road 3 and out on National Road 5.

I thought, marveling, how it was all my parents could do to get me to go with them, as a child, on bikes on the main road outside our house. Just one mile down. For icecream. Once there I would eat one and only one flavor: vanilla. Because I was too scared to try anything new.

Now I was smoothly dodging motorbikes, weaving around bathtub sized potholes, and unfazedly being roared past by trucks. Exhaust, noise, and dust, but we made it! We made our one necessary left-hand turn, blessedly, in a rare traffic-free window. Even at 6:30am the traffic was zoomy, and market stalls and umbrellas bled onto the street. The city had an entirely different feel than the small towns we've ridden through: more tall buildings, a KFC (?), plenty of imposing looking banks. Lots of billboards, advertising obvious things like beer and less-obvious things, like maybe face-whitening cream.

In a way I enjoy the mash of humanity, the concentration and flow needed to smoothly move along with it all, being a part of something so wildly different from "my" normal.

We put in 96 kilometers today; credit goes to the wind at our backs. Buddy Lissy and I rejoiced in this wind at every rest break. We are staying in another high-ceiling guest house (built during the time of the French protectorate we reckon) near the south end of the lake Tonle Sap. We continue in our journey north towards Siem Reap!

But then there will be five

A mango, a shower, and a hot afternoon. We bicycled 65 k today to stay outside Phnom Penh, somewhere near the airport. Starting at first light in the morning gives us a couple hours of riding in reasonable temperatures, instead of scorching and parboiling in the sun. The road today was dusty, busy with ever-honking traffic, and the shoulders were uneven and jouncy. The last of my Thai baht coins jangled irritatingly over the bumps and Buddy Lissy and I put earplugs in our left ears to block out the honks.

We pass a large bakery coming into this town, signed in English even, with beguiling baked goods all laid out. Because Buddy Lissy does not eat wheat, I sometimes help manifest her wheat-wanting by eating the stuff myself, and so with little convincing I went over to explore. How rare and lovely to find a bakery! I bought a slice of something that looked like a browned cinnamon twist cake.

How deceived was I.

The cunning thing was, in fact, full of ground pork and alarmingly colored processed meat pieces. Also some shreds of a cheese like thing. And onions and eggs. The dough was rich and lovely and I was exceedingly happy to be eating it.

Then we bicycled past 2 more, very similar-looking, large bakeries with English signs. And then 3 more! This makes me laugh, how when there is a particular establishment you're looking for, you go some time without finding it. But when you do, there are 5 of them. This has also happened with fruit-drink stands, bicycle shops, and clothing stalls. It would be like clustering all of Seattle's coffee shops in Fremont, rather than sprinkled helpfully about the city.

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How to baffle Cambodians
While pedaling, I was creating a mental list of some American Saturday Activities that might baffle a Cambodian woman--in the same way that I am sometimes thoroughly baffled here.

Your American woman wakes up, puts on expensive bright clothes used only for a single purpose, and goes running. Then she takes a hot shower in a little space that does not comprise the entire bathroom. She changes into other clothes (not pajamas), wearing only one patterned piece at a time (not two!). Then she drives her car (not motorbike) to the nature preserve and volunteers to pick up trash (what??!). She then meets her girlfriends for lunch with a menu and lots of choices, where she doesn't eat any rice because she is on a low-carb diet. After, she stops to relax by the outdoor community pool and lays in the sun to work on her tan. Finally, driving home, she slows down when passing a police officer to avoid getting a speeding ticket.

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.

Full moon and good legs

I just came back in from being out on display, which is: White Girl Walking, Carrying a Bag.

I'd gone out to wander the market of the town Ang Ta Som, where we stay tonight. The number of people waving at me, calling "hello!", and smiling, you'd think I was back again living in one of my Small Towns USA, as if everybody knew me. I performed Exhibit White Girl Adjusting Pant Legs, and also the engrossing performance White Girl Using Foreign Currency.

Indeed, paying for things here is no small task. I often am simultaneously using two currencies, the dollar and the riel. I find it almost comical to give someone a dollar for some snacks, to be given in change 1000 riel. Trying to think in thousands and ten thousands reminds me I did not inherit my mother's mathability. I stand there, holding a veritable bouquet of bills, befuddled, as a growing crowd of onlookers helpfully point to applicable bills in my fist.

The market was just closing up, which was fine with me, because it was one of the more repugnant markets I've visited. This probably also was because it was nearing the end of the day and goods weren't so fresh. Wads of trash littered the paths, snack stores offered boxes of dusty wearied looking products, and raw meat was black with flies. I had been hungry, but the half-dead fish in water-less pans and the pile of pinkly oozing chicken heads dissuaded my appetite.

But I'm learning I can eat well in this dirty disorganized country, with some care. I found a girl frying ducks and I watched as she stuck duck legs in the hot oil; yes, please, I'll eat that fresh and hot. I relished these good legs with lime and a bottle of Anchor Extra Stout (meaning more like a brown ale than a proper stout here) sitting watching the golden perfectly round full moon. I waved at it for you, so when it rotates your way, I highly recommend the duck legs.

Cambodian babies are well loved

Bath time. This was happening on the front porch where we were eating lunch.

"Whoa, grandpa! Funny girls on bikes!"