To the Border: A Muddy Nightmare!

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 quieter, either. We were wrong there, too! We didn’t know what quiet was until we hit the road to the border. The road was in very poor condition and very rarely used because most people opted for the speed boat that took them straight to Laos in less than one hour.

There were very few dwellings – many of the houses were abandoned, and sometimes we found a single house miles and miles from the nearest neighbor. The people in this remote part of the country were extremely poor. A lot of the houses didn’t even have walls – they had only wooden beams and a thatched roof. One could see a couple of cooking utensils on the floor and laundry and a hammock or two hanging from the beams. Like all Cambodian houses, there was no furniture (neither tables nor beds nor chairs).

Because this region was so isolated from the rest of the country (and almost completely cut off during the monsoon), the people had to live upon their own resources. The local people did not have access to any sort of health care and there were no schoolhouses. Running water and electricity – like in much of the country – were unheard of. People washed themselves in vats of fallen rainwater, and their clothing in stagnant mud puddles. There were very few villages, and often the “villages” consisted of only a few houses. Certainly there were no shops or markets. We continued living on rice and canned sardines (imported from Thailand) – the only food that we had been able to find and buy for the last 120 mi. between Kratie and the border. Rice and canned sardines may be okay for one meal, but every day for eight days! It gets real old real fast. In this quiet and almost uninhabited land, we biked (or pushed!) during the day, and slept at night in little dilapidated huts by the road that seemed to be used for workers as shelter from the sun and rain during the daytime. Perhaps because it was so quiet all around us, the sound of the insects in this part of the country seemed especially loud.

The defining feature of the landscape was the tree stumps of the forests that are quickly and efficiently being cut down by foreign companies. The black stumps are like a festering wound on the landscape and were a decidedly depressing sight.

When we set out from Stung Traeng, we thought that we were almost within reach of Laos, but how wrong we were! It would not have been too bad had it not been for the rain that turned the somewhat drying roads to a sloppy mess once again. It started shortly after we left Stung Traeng. The next day was an absolute nightmare. We managed to go only 0.98 km. (0.6 mi.) in 2 ½ hours!!! We got stuck during the first minute of biking, and it was all downhill from there. Our first big challenge to start off our day was to CARRY all of our bags – and then the bikes (on Stephane’s shoulder!) about 1/10 km. down the road. Now, 1/10 km. may not sound like it’s very far, but don’t forget that we’re carrying about 225 lbs. of luggage, on top of our two bikes, which weigh an additional 70 lbs. My shoulders and neck hurt unbearably from the strain of carrying the bags. Not to mention sore legs – not from pedaling, of course, but from trying to pick my feet up out of the mud and from trudging through what seemed like quick-sand with an extra 5 lbs. of mud clinging to each sandal! And to top it all off, we could still see the place where we had slept at the end of those 2 ½ hours!!!

After we had the bags back on the bikes, we had another long haul ahead of us. Pushing, cleaning mud from the tires, spokes and chains approximately every 15 sec. after starting to push or pedal – because we sank in the mud – and repeating the process over and over and over again. And don’t think that when I say that it took us 2 ½ hours to go 0.6 mi. that we stopped even a moment to rest. No – it was 2 ½ hours of sweating, straining, grunting, pushing and pulling – non-stop, continuous, strenuous effort. On some particularly muddy stretches, it even took the two of us pushing ONE bike to get it out of the mud, and then returning for the other, over and over. Push, push, pull, pull, sweat, sweat, huff, huff, grunt, grunt! We got one bike out of the mud – at least for the next 15 seconds!

During this whole ordeal, only two motor scooters and one big MAC truck made it through. And we could still see the shack where we had slept the night before! Two men from the MAC truck descended to wade through the mud puddles to see just how deep they were, and then the truck started. It skidded and sputtered, but it made it through okay. For the next 6 hours, only two motor scooters, and no other cars or trucks made it through. We continued pushing, stopping only long enough to eat some rice, fish paste, and rice alcohol with three woodcutters in the forest. And then, amazingly, 6 hours – and 2.1 miles – later, we passed the same MAC truck, which had itself become stuck in the mud!

This part of the road was especially bad. There were huge walls of mud. Several trucks and a couple of cars were immobile, abandoned at strange angles where they had skidded and half-fallen over before becoming completely stuck. Nine soldiers pushed behind one car, which spewed fumes and mud in their faces. They finally gave up, the car having sunk up to the WINDOWS by that point! The men started walking in the direction of the nearest village, which was a good 20-25 km. away. They surely didn’t make it before dark – I don’t know where they slept or ate.

The following day was our slowest day ever. We managed to go an impressive 4 km. (2.4 mi.) during our first 7 long and difficult hours on the road, for a grand total of 8.8 km. (5.3 mi.) for the entire day!

The third day was a bit easier (anything would have been easier!) and we finished the remaining 15 km. (9 mi.) to the border by mid-afternoon. We managed to negotiate our bribe fee at the Cambodia immigration check-point from $3 to $1, which was exactly what we had left in Cambodian currency. The check-point was a bit laughable – just a small hut among banana plants – but it’s all that was needed because absolutely no one – aside from us – was getting through!