March 7, 2017

A lovely ride today. Once again we were on the road early to beat the heat. The first couple of hours we had a good tail-wind and the temperatures were nice at about 25 degrees. By 9:00 a.m. the wind abruptly changed direction – head wind and the temperature increased to 30 degrees.

Fortunately, for us it was a short ride and we rolled into Serei Saophoan (Sisophon) at 10:30 a.m.

As we left the hotel, we noticed three Tuk Tuks carrying furniture.  We passed them on three separate occasions.  They would stop to fuel or for the drivers to get a drink and we would pass them with a wave, they would catch up to us and pass us with a wave.

The area is mainly agriculture with acres of rice fields that has already been harvested and is drying along the side of the road or being packed into large bags for shipment.

Yesterday we passed a rice mill for sale, today we passed a new mill that is a joint venture with South Korea. I am beginning to think that Cambodia is being sold out by the government to keep their people poor.  When you see a large building that houses the Cambodia Peoples Party, it does make you wonder.  This building is in Sisophoan.

We did see an auction for a couple of Kubota tractors, there must be money around somewhere. Actually, this area did not appear as poor as other areas that we have cycled through.

There is some land for sale, but I am not sure if foreigners can buy here.

We cycled through a town that had a lot of stonemasons working and small garden centres lined the road. The first stonemason I saw, was working by hand, very intricate work. Some of the others were using a hand-held grinder with sanding wheels to carve the bigger pieces.

Ralf spotted some artillery pieces and noticed that there was an infantry base.

One of the things we noticed on today\’s ride was that there appeared to be more schools and almost every town we cycled through had a small health clinic or hospital.

We had booked the hotel last night and thought that we might have to pay extra for arriving so early, four hours before check-in. The receptionist took me up to the room and discovered it hadn’t been cleaned. She had a discussion with the cleaners, to check which rooms had been cleaned and directed me to the next room (which has a little balcony). She took one of my panniers to help me, when she went to direct Ralf up to the room she carried his helmet! It seems the further you get away from the tourist areas the more helpful the Cambodians are. We didn’t have to pay any extra for checking in early.

We dropped our bags in the room and went straight back down to the small café as they were serving breakfast/lunch. We had a great second breakfast with a good cappuccino. Hopefully, we can get breakfast before we leave tomorrow.

We showered and I rinsed the cycle gear out, once again our nice room looks like the Clampett’s have arrived.  It is a nice hotel but has some strange rules – it also has a list of prices if you damage anything in the room.

We headed out to investigate Sisophon, or Serei Saophoan the Provincial capital of Banteay Province. There are a lot of big government buildings, a large indoor market and one street that is all motor repair shops.

All of the roundabouts have large statues of some god in the centre. At first glance most of them look as though they are giving you the finger, but it is actually the forefinger that they are holding up.

It was hot, both of us were dripping with sweat by the time we got back to the hotel. We checked out places to eat for tonight, not very appetizing, most of the food available was from stalls near the bus station in big pots! Fried crickets anyone, or some very scary fly infested mystery meat.

We went into the market, most of the stall holders were asleep or resting in hammocks above their stalls. A very sensible thing to do between noon and 2:00, when the temperature was over 35 degrees.

We found a small shop that sold noodles, yep it’s noodles again for dinner. We did find some baguettes – noodles and baguette, with a couple of beers, dinner of champions.  I am looking forward to the food in Thailand.