Drafting these daily reports plus picking and uploading the related photos takes a considerable amount of time. I still love doing that but always look for a place that I consider inspiring. If I do find particularly nice places, I wish to share them at the start of a page so you can relate to my proceedings even closer. Today (Sat, Jan 20) I am sitting at the market in Preah Vihear City typing the following lines. This is my favourite choice of location: A busy market, having an iced coffee, some delicious onion and vegetable pastry and the mandatory Cambodian free pot of tea
I arrived here in Preah Vihear City yesterday fairly late in the afternoon after a huge 7 hours in the saddle. Not what I was planning to do but you will learn about that later. Once again my day in Stung Treng started much, much earlier than I was hoping for. At 2 am a large group of Cambodians entered the guesthouse and that is one thing you simply have to accept all over South East Asia. If they wish to talk, they talk loud regardless of the time and whether somebody else might be asleep. Fortunately they all were to bed swiftly and I got back to sleep. Only to be woken up by what I thought was somebody tapping my shoulder. When I opened my eyes I could see a young gecko trying to hold on to a huge insect on the pillow right next to my head. I assume they dropped down from the ceiling. I wiped both off with a vengeance and the gecko disappeared unhurt while the insect seemed to be happy in my presence and stayed. None of both would have done any harm to me but I still got such a fright that my night was over at 5 am. At that time I didn´t know this would come to my advantage later in the day.
I was determined to spend the night in Chhaeb, just 88 km down Highway 9 for one sole reason: There was to my knowledge the only guesthouse between Stung Treng and Preah Vihear City (PVC). I took it very easy to get there and was pleasantly surprised by the good cycling conditions: Excellent surface all the way through, mostly overcast without any threat of rain, wind neutral to slightly supportive, flat terrain and far more visual attraction than there had been between the Lao border and Stung Treng. Still nothing really exciting but plenty of agricultural activities around the villages with some hills in the background. Quite nice and I had several drink stops plus a half an hour conversation with Richard from Austria who is on his way to Hanoi.
It was still only 1.30 pm when I rolled into Chhaeb and turned right onto the 64 towards PVC. This will be a long afternoon with nothing much to do I thought when I came to the combined guesthouse, restaurant and petrolstation on the right. When I walked into the guesthouse there were only two girls cleaning the rooms but none of them spoke a word of English. It still was quickly made clear to me there was no room available. I had a look and saw 10 of the 11 rooms open and empty but understood they had reservations for them. Weekend? Wedding party? Or a bigger tour group? I couldn´t find that out and it was really irrelevant. Fact was there was no room for me and no other guesthouse in town. I wasn´t happy but not really concerned either. That sort of stuff happens when you are travelling remoter areas. I still had another 3 hours of daylight for the 52 km into PVC. The only problem: The road here (the signs say its called 64, the km markers say its the 9) turns mildly towards the northwest which gave me a breeze from the front right. Still no problem, I am almost back to full fitness and the contre-le-montre session was opened. I love that pressure every now and then and I tell you: I had a flyer. Nothing to be missed on this section scenery wise so at the end of the day I was actually happy the day went as it did.
All the same I didn´t feel like having a big loop around town searching for a guesthouse and luck had it when entering PVC the very first compound on the left is the Sopheak Meangkol Guesthouse, also Happiness GH. Run by mother, daughter and four dogs I received a very friendly welcome and was offered three different types of rooms: fan/cold water at 7$; fan /hot water for 10$ in the attachment and after having seen one of the latter there was no need to see the ac rooms for 16$ anymore. Immaculately clean, good wifi- everything exactly meeting my profile regarding a decent room.
Soas I have time in hand before meeting Jan in Siem Reap on Jan 26 I will have an extra day here. PVC itself has got plenty of other guesthouses, the two that appealed most to me would have been just 500 m down that same Mlou Prey Street (which is by the way the name of the turnoff from the 64 to the city) to the right and left. I like the city and I could honestly not tell you why. It´s artificially set up in a chessboard design with zero sights but a very attractive market area. I guess that makes it to me- things happening without the need to get involved.
One of the culprits waking me up for a second time last night
Breakfast before departure. I will try to add this soup restaurant opposite the Dayana Restaurant to maps.me as it is really outstanding. The whole lot on this picture came 6000 Riel / 1.50 US$
Highway 9 as it looked all day. No shoulder but no problems due to little traffic. I felt there were 3 or 4 waves of minibuses full of Cambodian people, the rest of the ride was rather quiet
Let me use this photo to have a word on food in Cambodia in general. It´s the only country in SEA where I suffered from serious diarrhoe on previous visits. You can see why. On no market or village stall I have ever seen meat or fish being kept under any sort of refrigeration. This and the lack of general hygiene makes me extremely hesitant when it comes to eating meat and I live almost vegetarian
If I may quote the Dalai Lama: "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito in your room." He is so right and that´s not only why I am carrying that mosquito racket for thousands of kilometers but that´s as well the reason why I am staying here for two nights. Such little gestures like that plant in my bathroom tell you: This place is looked after well
