Leigh still wasn't feeling great for a lot of yesterday so we decided to have an early start for Preah Vihear City even though it was only 57 kilometers away. We were on the road at about a quarter to six and enjoyed a good road with little traffic for most of the way.

Breakfast was a very good plate of grilled pork ribs and rice with pickled veggies and soup on the side at an absolutely disgusting roadside eatery in Kulen. However, it was busy and the reasoning is that if the locals like it, the turnover will be high and the food will have less chance to be off.

We cycled gently onwards and the road remained mostly quiet. At one point a young man on a motorcycle joined us and spoke with us at length, mostly to Leigh, asking all the usual questions and a great deal more that we haven't yet been asked. After finding out from Leigh that I was indeed her husband, he let her know that he thought she was beautiful. What greater ego-polishing can a sweaty middle aged woman on a bicycle get, particularly when it transpired that he was a grade 12 high school pupil ?

We stopped at the first hotel we found in Preah Vihear City, the Sen Samnang. It's a bit of a dump but for $15 it had aircon and WiFi and wasn't too grubby. Out in the sticks we expect to may more for less when it comes to accommodation but this is often reversed when it comes to food. We had lunch at the very neat looking Greenhouse Restaurant a few hundred meters south of the hotel and for $1.50 each we got more rice than we could eat with excellent pork and ginger plus the the usual tea. There was also fishsauce, soysauce and chilli on the table, something we haven't seen much of in Cambodia.