Living like the Locals… The last 200 km. from Kratie to the border were difficult, but traveling it by bike at least had the advantage of giving us insight into how life for the area’s locals is lived. It took us 8 days to travel those 120 mi. That gives you an idea of the […]

Stung Traeng to the Laotian Border: A Muddy Nightmare! We didn’t think that the road could get any worse than it had been from Kratie to Stung Traeng. We were wrong! It took us three days to bike the 35 miles separating us from the Laotian border! And we didn’t think it could get any […]

From Kratie to Stung Traeng: We learn the meaning of a “bad” road… Everyone had told us that the 200-km. stretch of road from Kratie north to the Laotian border was “bad,” but just how bad was “bad?” No one seemed to know or to be able to tell us. We couldn’t find anyone who […]

Quiet Roads along the Mekong and the Irrawaddy River Dolphins From Phnom Penh, we headed north, back again through Skon, the spider town, and onto Kampong Cham, the country’s third largest city at 45,000. It was in this part of the country that we had our cheapest meals: fried noodles with vegetables for $0.12, sandwiches […]

Siem Reap We were unbelievably happy to reach Siem Reap after three hard days on the road and after our life-threatening experience in Mario Andretti’s taxi. After we had checked into our guesthouse, and as I unpacked and prepared to wash my muddy clothing, two things struck me – our bed sheets and the printed […]

The Shared Taxi… On our third day in Cambodia, after 5 hours on the road and an excruciatingly slow pace of 8.4 km./hr., our odometers showed that we had only advanced 21.5 km. Ouch! It was 11:00 in the morning, and we still had 7 ½ hours of daylight to pedal only 30 km., but […]

The Temple (extract from my journal)… It’s 6:00 A.M., and I’m sitting inside the pavilion in a temple complex 55 km. west of Siem Reap, listening to monks chanting in the temple just across the courtyard. The chanting has been going on since 4:15 A.M., 20 minutes after a monk sounded a gong at 3:55 […]

Societal Challenges: Health, Education, and Human Trafficking After three decades of civil war, Cambodia is still struggling to overcome its past and rebuild its fragile infrastructure, economy, and society. The civil war ended seven years ago, but political troubles and wide-scale corruption still plague the country. Although political and economic instability has decreased recently, Cambodia […]