Siem Reap to Phnom Penh
This story was posted under the categories: Big Asia Trip, Cambodia, Cycling, Cycling South-East Asia
Siem Reap is home to the famous Angkor temples, the biggest one being Angkor Wat. It is a huge building, much alike to the Forbidden City in Beijing, but honestly, we found the latter one to be a lot more beautiful.
The jungle infested temple of Ta Phrom (setting of the Tomb Raider 2 movie) and Bayon, with the many many huge faces, were more our cup of tea.
(impossible to find a moment alone with all of these Chinese here, so might as well go on the picture together)
Lonely Planet says that you could easily fill 3 to 7 days in Angkor, so it should come as no surprise that we were tired of it after day one 
The next day, we made for Kampong Kdei, the next village some 60 kms further. Halfway we stopped, parked our bicycles and arranged a motorbike driver who would take us to Beng Mealea, a temple in the middle of the jungle that has not yet been renovated and which the forces of nature have turned into a wonderful ruin.
Kampong K’dei is a small provincial town, counting some 100 houses and 3 guesthouses. Nobody stops there except for cyclists. What’s so special about Kampong K’dei is that all the animals run lose around town. Nowhere on our trip have we seen such a zoo running in between the market stalls and restaurants! Cows, geese, dogs, pigs, … and of course, anything can be transported on a pickup truck also. How many chickens can you fit on a rope?
Our next stop should have been Skoun, a town known for their fried spiders, but we were both a bit weakened by stomage aches and decided to stop in Kampong Thmor. We booked a room, rested and Greg had a haircut. The worst ever! The barber didn’t understand that we wanted it shorter on the top, he just kept on cutting it shorter on the sides!
Still unsure whether we were in good enough condition to continue, we decided to cheat a little and take a pick-up truck to Kampong Cham on the riverbanks of the Mekong. We passed through Skoun on the way and saw the fabulous spiders… did’t feel well enough to eat one though :s
We spent a few days in Kampong Cham and made a very nice daytrip to Wat Hanchey, a temple on a hilltop (hills in Cambodia are ever smaller than those in Belgium) with views over the Mekong. We came back over a dirttrail, running through the backyards of some local villages and along the Mekong. Absolutely wonderful!
From Kampong Cham we took another secondary road (meaning, dust, rocks etc) towards Phnom Penh following the Mekong. Very nice, through some excellent villages, but unfortunately, Greg’s legs gave up about 30 kms before the finish. As we had arrived on the highway now, in the middle of raging traffic between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, we hopped onto a pickup with our bikes and rolled into Phnom Penh the easy way.