26/03/2011 Getting to Vientiane, Laos

Staying in Siem Reap has been a wonderful experience. There are so many things to see that we would have spent another week exploring the area. Unfortunately, we are rushed by our Chinese visa that expires on the 18th of April.

Leaving th temples, we decide to make a last stop at Ukdal Spean also known as the 1000 tingas river, a stream in the mountains where a thousand phallus have been sculpted in the rock under the water in order to give fertility to the lands where the water eventually ends up.

The area North of Siem Reap is very poor and signs on both sides of the road are constantly warning us that mines are surrounding us. Children are still welcoming us but this time they look much skinner.

Taxi in Cambodia

After a painful climb to the Choam-Sgam border, we are back in Thailand but not for the best. For the second time of this trip, the border officer tries to steal us some money. Going down the hills, we meet Mhee, a rubber plantation owner who speaks very good English. She invites us to stay at her place for the night. Next day, we bike to Surin. We are pretty tired of Thailand, of its unfilling and uninspired food, of the people who think we are millionnaire because we are white. We are also tired of the landscape that didn't changed much since Krabi. So we decide that it would be better to use our last month outside of China exploring Lao instead. So we took a train from Surin to Nong Khai which ends up in a nightmare, each train officer trying rigourously to get some extra money out of our pockets. 

After two days, we finally cross the Friendship bridge to Lao, very possible to cross on bicycle despite of the signs clearly prohibiting bicycle on the bridge.

People in Vientiane are much nicer and we instantanously love the atmosphere here. At our guesthouse, we meet three cyclists. Hendric who is going to China like us and a couple from Holland who pedaled all the way to Lao.

Vientiane

18/03/2011 15 photos of Angkor Temples

Jusqu'a maintenant, si j'avais un seul endroit a vous recommander pour un voyage, ce serait les temples d'Angkor près de Siem Reap. La région comporte plus de 100 temples enfouis dans la jungle. Nous avons pris trois jours pour visiter les plus importants et c'était pas assez. Nous aurions pu facilement passer une demie-journée dans chacun. Ils sont fascinant. Si jamais vous y allez, je vous conseille de prendre un laisser-passer de 7 jours minimum et de prendre le temps d'apprécier chacune de ces merveilles. Voici 15 photos pour vous donner l'eau a la bouche.

15/03/2011 Bangkok to Siem Reap

There are surprisingly only 350 km between Bangkok and the Cambodian tourist hub of Siem Reap. It took us 4 days to cover the distance.

 

The King and the Queen are always present on the road

Getting out of Bangkok had more to do with a 20 km zigzag between cars than anything else. But out of the city, we biked through nice villages, field and eucalyptus plantations.

On the second night, we ended up sleeping in a typically Thai one room apartment, unoccupied and generously offered to us for the night by the owner. We met our neighbour, Kao, a former architect from Bangkok who decided to go back to the countryside and start a tree nursery business.

 Dumpyard near the border. Here garbages are simply burned to make some room for the incoming wastes.

The Cambodian border at Poipet is a big mess of people pushing wooden buggies, backpackers crossing on foot, duty-free hotels, construction sites, zigzagging scooters and young kids on their bicycle crossing the border to go to school.

At first sight, Cambodians looks more friendly than their neighbour, especially the children on the side of the road who are cosntantly waving us and saying "hello" or "good bye". Most of the towns, which doesn't include Siem Reap, have little electricity, so become very dark at night, and water on tap is not a standard. People wake up with the sun and everything is over before 8pm.

 sculpting buddhas

The landscape remembers us the Canadian prairies but much dryer, almost dead. Burned crops where skinny cows and chickens are digging for food into the charcoal soils are stretching for ever.

On the almost no-car roads, we see tons of bicycles. Some of them are carrying products to be sell, including dead pigs delivered at the back of the bikes, four legs in the air. The influence of the many NGOs is apparent: schools at every 20 km, students with brand new bicycles, tractors in the fields. Sometimes, a World Vision's jeep passes us on the road.

Siem Reap seems to be in a different country: cars everywhere, electricity, tuk-tuks, white people, luxurious hotels with swimming pool at the back, French bakeries and NGO headquarters. Even children are more hostile, trying to sell us Angkor pictures or screaming at us "go back home". We understand them, there is such a touristic pressure here, they must be tired of the white people. Despite all of that, we really enjoyed Siem Reap with its relax vibe, nice people and the incredible aura of the Angkor temples just a few kilometers North.

11/03/2011 Bangkok

Bangkok est vraiment le centre touristique de l'Asie du Sud-Est. On n'a jamais vu autant de blancs depuis notre départ des États-Unis. Chacun a sa raison pour être dans cette ville. On la visite, On y transite, on vient s'y faire soigner (les hôpitaux avec des halls d'entrée dignes des plus grands hôtels fleurissent un peu partout, payés par les régimes d'assurances voyages), on vient y trouver d'autres voyageurs, on vient y acheter des produits introuvables ailleurs, etc. Nous avons même rencontré un couple de cyclotouristes qui avait pris un train de la frontière du Cambodge pour venir y faire réparer leurs vélos.

Des cyclotouristes comme ceux-là, nous en avons rencontrés plusieurs. Étrangement tous sans exception arrivaient et repartaient en train. Il semble que nous soyons les seuls à vraiment pédaler d'un bout à l'autre de la ville. La plupart fuyaient la chaleur en se dirigeant vers le Nord, au Laos et au Yunnan. On devrait donc faire quelques rencontres dans ces environs. Les vélos de ces gens ont des pneus deux fois plus large que les notres et des cadres beaucoup plus robustes. On se demande si c'est eux qui sont trop lourds ou bien nous trop fragile pour les quelques kilomètres de terre battue qui s'annoncent. À suivre...

À Bangkok, nous avons découvert, non sans mal, les trois magasins de vélos potables de la ville. Amélie a acheté un pneu à 5$ chez un vieux Chinois. J'ai l'impression qu'il s'use juste à le regarder mais bon, il n'y avait vraiment pas de choix dans la ville pour des pneus de 700 mm.

En faisant nos emplettes, nous avons vécu le traffic de Bangkok, un étonnant amas de camions, voitures, taxis roses, tuk-tuks et rickshaws statiques sur la chaussée. Les vélos et les motos chargés zigzagent au travers cette masse, transportant une infinité de produits, des tapis perse aux caisses d'oeufs. Voici un petit film capté à notre départ de Bangkok

Une fois avoir fait abstraction du traffic, de la masse de touristes et de tout les vendeurs qui les harcèlent, Bangkok est une ville plutôt relaxe et joviale, très agréable à visiter.

08/03/2011 Penang to Bangkok

As the moonsoon is going away and the heat is building up in Malaysia, biking and camping are becoming more and more uncomfortable. From Penang (Georgestown) after getting our Thai visa, we took a boat to Langkawi where we spent  two days on the beaches. Honestly, we didn't really like the place. Too many tourists, too busy and the beaches on the West Coast where we went were not worthed.

From Langkawi we took a ferry to the Thailand's paradise island of Ko Lipe. We stayed three days there, snorkeling in the crystal clear waters and admiring coral reefs and thousands of fishes, urchin and starfishes. Then, we took a 6 hours ferry to Ko Lanta where we took three more days of rest, sleeping and enjoying the beach.

A few words about doing islands hoping in Thailand with your bicycle...Be prepared to fight! Two tourists trying to carry their bikes on ferries may sounds to a Thai crew like a good opportunity to extract some money from your pocket. So be ready to argue. After long tail boats dropped us from the ferry to the sand beach of Ko Lipe, The guy from the passeport office/ferry cie started asking us 500B, which is a considerable amount in Thailand, for the 50 meters boat ride that our bicycles had done. That sound weird since it should have been the long tail driver to ask us the money and not the guy at the border office. Finally, we argued with the guy and left without paying. Ultimately, He threathened us that we would have to pay 1000B if we want to leave the island with our bikes. Bullshit! In fact, it didn't cost any extra to put our bikes in the long tail when transbording to the ferry to Ko Lanta. The ferry crew asked us 100B per bicycle for the trip which is reasonable (5-10% of your ticket cost for your bicycle, I think it is all right). However, on the middle of the journey, we had to transfer to another boat in which occasion the crew tried to ask for more money. I said something like "I already paid 200B and I won't pay more!" and they stop arguing. The new boat was much smaller than the first one but we finally found a way to fit our bicycles in, between pilled up luggages and squeezed passengers. Fiou!

Our bikes' journey from Ko Lipe to Ko Lanta...

Waiting on the beach in Ko Lipe

On the Long tail boat

Waiting to board to the ferry

On the ferry on a stop

In the speed boat to Ko Lanta

The rest of our journey between Ko Lanta and Bangkok is an epic ride with several days over 100km. Most of the road on highway 41 and 4 is flat except a 200 km very hilly stretch near Chumphon which was very painful. The nights were so hot that is was very difficult to sleep in the tent. After a few bad days, we finally decided to forget about the tent for the rest of our journey to Bangkok and take motels instead. Another problem we accounter was to feed ourselves properly. Thai cuisine might be good or not but one thing is sure, like my mother says, white rice doesn't feed you...and that's what they eat all the time here! After a while starving on our bicycles, we elaborate the very complicated strategy of eating five times a day. And each time, we ordered not snacks but main courses. Another part of the strategy was to rehydrate ourselves by drinking pepsi and eating a watermelon per day. We were also chunking an average of 10 liters of water per person per day. Let's sweat girls!

Melon break

The Thai have the nice tradition of service plates of vegetables with the meal. But don't look for that in the touristic area. This is what the locals do.

We biked into Bangkok softly without any incident. In the tourist area, a white guy on his bicycle saw us and brought us to a bike shop were we finally found the back derailler wheels that we were trying to buy since Georgestown.

brand new back derailler wheel vs after 13,000km. Our bikes suffer!

 Since Singapore, we got half a dozen flats always because of that same type of damn pin. It keeps going through our brand new-kevlar belt super resistant tires....What the hell!