The Great Cambodian Soundtrack

January 31, 2015

Hell road of sand, then heaven

Krong Preah Vihear to Sra Sriyang 36

Sra Sriyang to Siem Reap 75

Dear little friends,

The rising sun was setting the hotel lobby floor's dust aglow when we wheeled out the door, only to stop in our tracks ten feet later when we discovered a lovely lady selling Vietnamese coffee and banh mi sandwiches next door. She smiled and beckoned us into her plastic chairs to patiently await her treasure. We had eaten muesli in our room, so the sandwiches were tucked away next to some chilled drinking water bottles in "the fridge", meaning they were wrapped in my fleece jacket in the pannier, and off we jetted out of Krong Preah Vihear.

Apparently I'm heading in the wrong direction.

Banh mi are a traditional Vietnamese sandwich with pate, pickled vegetables, shredded carrots, and more on a baguette.

Lest there be some confusion, this is a city, not a temple. Prasad Preah Vihear is a massive temple complex on the northern Cambodia/Thai border, the scene of much territorial dispute and drama including soldiers from both countries taking turns occupying it and creating a lot of dustup. It would be a very worthy place to visit but not this time. Krong Preah Vihear is a dusty town (why I feel the need to include that in the description of any Cambodian town is a mystery even to me since that is the default setting) with not a lot to offer as far as we could tell, although our fried rice at the nearby bus station was quite nice.

The road seemed a bit less desolate than the day before, but the slash-n-burn carnage continued. We stopped in late morning, the siren call of our banh mi unmuffled by the fridge, and had a little picnic in the shade of some very fragrant cashew trees and greenish grass. That was a heck of a banh mi. It is probably worth noting that while I don't remember much of the landscape I do remember the sandwich. There were trees lining the road, friendly hellos from houses, and general pleasantness all around.

Leaving Preah Vihear we were ordered to halt by some road workers. Turned out that it was photo time.

Our goal was the town of... uh... well, it might be Koh Ker, it might be Sra Sriyang, it might be the completely off-the-wall name of Xam Coong Thmey, which I think Pocket Earth simply coined on its own with some kind of random Asian word generator, since there was no other reference anywhere else for such a place. We were looking for the town near the ancient site of Prasad Koh Ker, with supposedly a guesthouse and a restaurant, okay? And we found it. The guesthouse had a sign pointing down the street it was on, you know, an arrow to the left, so we went left.

This street is hard to describe, but here goes. Take the red dust of Cambodia firmly settled on every umbrella, bunch of bananas, man, woman, and newborn infant, lumpily guarding a slough of plastic garbage that blows itself lazily around, and then picture us single-tracking down this street to find the guesthouse, our hearts sinking.

At the end of the street, still no guesthouse. Bruce thought we should turn onto that street and keep looking, instead I asked a nice looking lady who told us to go right back where we came from and it would be right on the road. Sure enough, after another wavering ride down the Trash Gauntlet we looked up at the humble wooden building where the sign was anchored and the woman there nodded and said, "Yes, guesthouse." Oh snap, the old arrow fake-out trick!Later on in the evening we watched a young Polish couple on bicycles make the exact same maneuver, and register the same dismay we did. There was reportedly another guesthouse in town but everybody who went there would turn right back around and come back to ours of the confusing arrow. There were a surprising amount of foreigners in that funny little guesthouse with its cracked wooden walls allowing slivers of light and conversation to flow freely between rooms. The bathrooms down the hall were of the Loikaw, Myanmar variety, squat toilets with big tanks of water to dip and splash-bathe in. It was fine.

Everybody was in this dump of a town to go to see an ancient Khmer temple site without Angkor crowds, so we all were up at the crack o' dawn and riding our bikes the six miles. I kind of don't want to even describe this site further because then you might go there and make a crowd happen and it would be a shame. There is a loop of several ruins, inhabited by wonderful birds and not much else. Yes, there is a vendor section with a lot of fantastically optimistic people waiting for the day the big crowds come in but this day wasn't it. There is the Big Guy Prasad that has stairs to the top and a view of treetops, a nearby village, and not much else because of the smoky air. The sign sternly said we had to limit ourselves to ten minutes at the top with only 15 people. We sat up there for about an hour with no other humans in sight except for the Khmer guide on the ground having a lengthy conversation on her cell phone.

Other Prasads had linga, and if you don't know what a lingum is let's just say it's anything longer than it is wide symbolic of, you know. Phalluses. Look it up. Bruce wanted me to pose with the linga but I declined, letting him do the honors.

Oh, a few cars with Europeans and their guides stopped by, and one not-that-huge bus with a clutch of elderly French came along but we cleverly jumped on our bikes and sped away to other Prasads. There was one Japanese couple who seemed to only be there to pose for photos and harangue and be harangued by each other but their stops were brief and if they looked up from their phones longer than three seconds at a time we didn't see it. The birds were phenomenal. I like ancient sites but not as much as I love birds, so my photos seem to be of butterflies and lichen and of course tiny, out-of-focus birds. I don't really see why some ancient king was so insecure he had to declare these things built in his honor and keep slaves busy for decades hauling huge rocks around and lifting them god-knows-how to honor what, who, why? I do love the carvings. I also love that nature wins over human creations. Tiny plants continue to plant themselves in the chinks and get ready to split stone into sand to be compressed again in some future sea. It's marvelous and makes me hopeful for the world's future without us.

There is a beautiful loop road of ancient sites in the Prasad Koh Ker complex.

I believe there was a temple in the vicinity but this was more beautiful.

On that optimistic note we returned to town, split a plate of fried rice exactly twice the price of the plates we had in Krong Preah Vihear and had the best fruit shake of the trip from yet another darling Cambodian lady beckoning us into her chairs. We must have looked kind of forlorn because she also felt we should eat a papaya from her tree.

These peddler wagons are homemade vehicles that roam Cambodia selling stoves and pots and pans.

I should mention that both nights in Sra Sriyang (the name we finally settled on for this town) were marked by sound effects that have to be experienced to be believed and I'm not talking about the quiet talk between travelers that drifted between rooms. The first night, yeah, the trucks on the highway roared through like they were going to put a front wheel on our bed. And a few dogs howled, you would too if you lived there. But then, at probably around 4 am, somebody turned on some music.

We hadn't had deafening night music quite to this extent since Paklai's karaoke hell, and before that, Pakokku's monk lecture/concert. The thing is, we really adore Cambodian music, no kidding. It's amazing. The bass line of this song was wandering some beautiful mystic path and the vocals were haunting and soaring. More songs were played, the house thrummed with it, yet nobody seemed to be annoyed, people were silent in their rooms, nobody was out in the yard yelling at the offender. In Portland such goings-on would generate gunshots. It went on until sunrise when we were jetting off to the temple, it lasted past sunrise, we could hear it miles away along the road. Apparently there was a wedding in town, it is necessary for the cooks to show up in the wee hours and fire up the speakers as they start cooking for the wedding feast. The music is your invitation and if you can't be bothered to attend at least you got music for breakfast.

The following night, no music. Just dogs. Barking for hours, punctuated by howling and squabbling, then more barking. Trucks would roar through to drown out the dogs but only briefly. Two nights of little sleep did not seem auspicious to me, but I was looking forward to sneaking out at chicken walking time and so we did.

The plan according to Bruce the night before, was to ride ten miles and then dig into our muesli and Lactasoy. At eleven or twelve miles I inquired about this plan and discovered that the breakfast feast was to be delayed until 25 miles. That was how far Svay Leu was and a logical place to stop, in his mind. Not in mine, however, so somebody insisted that a peanuts 'n orange stop was in order so that he didn't have to pull somebody's famished body from a ditch and be filled with a lifetime of bitter regrets. He didn't really seem to be capable of that kind of regret but agreed to let me have a little nosh.

Good thing too! Svay Leu was not the sort of place to have a muesli picnic party, but boy, did it have a great noodle and coffee place. The Sunday morning brunch crowd was watching an Animal Planet documentary on dolphins, the teen boys riveted like toddlers even though the narration was in English with no subtitles. It made for some musing about what the Khmer word for "echolocation" might sound like. Khmer has an amazing zoo of dipthongs to keep me entertained as I read the road signs, with place names like Thmey and Svay and Chpdong, and who could forget Phdal Lday?

In flat Cambodia, even modest hills get dramatic warning signs.

The next plan of Bruce's was the Great Sneak-In Entrance of Angkor Wat. If we took certain back roads that he had meticulously scouted out on Google Maps we could enter from the north, bypass the $20 entrance fee, get a late afternoon gander at the temples from our bikes, and then head on into Siem Reap.

Actually this was a great plan with only a hitch or two. One of them was a road that started out surprisingly as the eastern-most entrance of Angkor, with an ancient sandstone road and the serpentine gate guards in mostly intact shape. It reminded me of walking the Appian Way into Rome, except this route devolved quickly into deep sand and much cursing ensued. There was also the ricketiest bridge yet, one I had a lot of bitter regrets of my own halfway through. The only thing I can say is there were fresh motorbike tracks onto it, and no bodies in the little creek below, that's the only way I can explain my rash decision to be the first to cross it.

There was some heated debate about the length of this sand road, whether it was 4 miles or 457.

All previous rickety bridges paled before this one.

The east entrance of Angkor, used only by locals and clueless foreigners on bikes.

The sand road ordeal behind us, we took a bunch of right-angled roads, and started seeing a lot of tourists riding in buses and motos and on arduous-looking rental bikes. By the time we entered the north gate of Angkor and saw the fellas Churning the Ocean of Milk it was a pretty sweet moment of triumph. The tall mysterious trees of Angkor still host the shrillest cicadas in the world, so loud you think you may be generating them yourself from your first epileptic seizure. A kind Canadian took our photo and then we entered the gate and the fray of approximately 150,000 tourists walking around in a daze with matching tour tags hanging from their necks.

Ah, back to civilization and souvenir vendors.

We looked at each other, not really believing we had ridden all the way to Angkor Wat.

Churning the Ocean of Milk with a few of our old friends. North gate Angkor Thom, Cambodia.

North gate of the huge Angkor Thom/Angkor Wat complex.

We blasted through Angkor with only the briefest glances at Bayon and the main temple, Angkor Wat. We've seen them before, the magic is gone, the people-watching fantastic, but we had nearly 75 miles under the saddle for the day and all I wanted was a shower and hydration and food.

Siem Reap was moderately busy when we were here six years ago. Now it's insane, and that doesn't bother me at all because there are a million wonderful guest houses all competing for our dollars, with cheap food, great beverages, and open rooms. We tittered with glee after our showers that turned the bathroom floor reddish brown, gazing at $1.75 well drinks with stupid names like Apsara Delight or Temple at Dawn. We had traveled 200 miles in three days of riding, we had giant plates of ginger chicken steaming in front of us, and all was well. The guest house bed had clean white sheets, and an open window with clean soft air coming in and no barking or noise of any kind during the night. Well, there was a cat yowling, but that was nothing, nothing at all.

Today's ride: 111 miles (179 km)
Total: 1,458 miles (2,346 km)

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Jen RahnThis thought makes me smile:
"I also love that nature wins over human creations."

.. imagining the sights and sounds of a post-human planet. Birdsong, absence of belching trucks, thick greenery. Re-emergence of life forms extinguished by human "progress".
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