Cycling Cambodia- Day 11. What Goes Up, Must Come Down (thank goodness)

After the 800m climb to get to Sen Monorom and a short stay, the winding mountain roads took me down through Mondulkiri Province, through national parks and thunderstorms and misty mornings to my current location in Ratanakiri!

Vietnamese noodle soup with tofu. ~I think I'm in heaven. 

Petrol Station sleeping (feat plant-pot bath) 

Day 7 - Rest Day - Well Deserved Putang

Finally made it!! What a struggle that was. I'm now sitting at roughly 800metres above sea level...bladdyellll my legs are KILLING ME and you don't appreciate that phrase until you then have to use a squat toilet when your here. Last nights abode saw me sleeping in a small house next to a Power Station, the only shelter I found an hour in each direction...talk about luck.
The stilt houses of the Mekong Trail have been left behind as I'm greeted with green, rolling hills and a crisp chill in the air. A rest day today to explore some waterfalls. I can't believe I made it here!

Cycling Cambodia - Day 5 -300km

Resting in the rain, swerving snakes, and rolling over hills.

I'v'm having a fantastic time on my journey and I'm over 10% of the way done now. As I  wait at the bottom of the incline up the biggest mountain of my trip (800m above sea level). Here's a few photos from the journey so far.

Cycling Cambodia - Day 1

Well, I was complaining life wasn't exciting enough on the island...
Since my little trip to Phnom Penh and just day 1 of cycling I've encountered a misogynistic would-be bike thief, racist Barang (foreigner) beggers, avoided much-too overly friendly drunk teachers, had the police called on me and slept at a police station for the night. I've missed this lifestyle!! More from all that when I'm on more than 33% battery and have a WiFi connection again. For now, enjoy a few snapshots from my phone.

"And Then Some Flies Started Crawling Out of a Hole Just Below Her Ribs...and Other Unorthodox Stories From This Tropical Island

I'm sure this following writing would be far more interesting with the addition if some gossip, news, or drama. Past tales of drunken escapade, men with machetes, and mistakenly getting trapped in love triangles are of the past. Alas, it's filled with some updates on my tan progression (spoiler: it's not going well), photos of various sunrises and sunsets, and ways I've been filling my time (and belly with coconuts). Maybe I'll add some dragons for dramatisation. 

The Island

Everyone has left the island so we have everything to ourselves! All the ex-pats are now out of work, all the "corona refugees" (tourists who decided to ride it out here) have all flocked to Kampot, which is about 100km from here, to soak up river life and enjoying their daily parties...sounds like a nightmare to me right now. 

I've been spending most of my days here jumping between Coconut Beach and Koh Touch (the main village). On Coconut beach, I still squat in a hammock in a beach shack. In Koh Touch, I live with my friend Sara and she feeds me in exchange for me giving her a hand around the house, selling her bread in the village, watching the kids, crushing the 1000's of cans in her garden so we can sell then to recycling. Or washing Grandma Tyty's dog in the village for a bit of grub and water, so be it! 

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies? 

Spending all this time with Sara is great, and I love that I get to have this insight into Khmer culture. My speaking is coming on leaps and bounds and my vocabulary has grown to about 500+ words. The one thing I can't say I'm the biggest fan of is the Cambodians attempts at compliments. A simple "you look nice today" will suffice, but I guess that they teach BRUTAL HONESTY instead of if you can't say anything nice don't say anything nice don't say anything at all because any nice comment is always followed by "you like nice today, yesterday you looked so bad". Here are a select few favourites of the last couple weeks; 

" You have good heart, people village say you no have good here (points to face) but I say yes no good here (points to face) but have good here (points to heart)"

"I have a brother, he love barang lady (westerners) especially ones a bit fat like you...he also take methamphetamine so you good for him"

Me: I saw some cute belly jewellery, makes me wanna get my belly pierced! 

Sara: But you have, no look good same same Ayse...she have small (belly) and sexy.

Me: you saying I'm not sexy?!?

Sara: No you sexy.

So I am in shock right now, an actual compliment! ...

Sara: (in Cambodian) sexy like a baby pig

I might be considered fat in Asia, but that could be mistaken for my incredibly thick skin...

Just call me The Flash 

You know you're getting older when your favourite hobby how's from something like hosting pub crawls, or scuba diving to...running. About two months ago I started up the Couch to 5K programme after reading the brilliant Jog On by Bella McKenzie. After seeing my own old ladies success with it, I thought- HELL WHY NOT ONLY SITTING HERE EATING OREOS OR THINKING ABOUT EATING OREOS OTHERWISE. So I started off running barefoot on the beach for a minute, then walking for 90 seconds, as Laura from the Podcast suggests I do. 5 weeks later I was pumping out the tunes from my phone and plodding along to 10km every few days...I'm still having a bit of imposter syndrome and I don't like to call it "running" so much as I'm more doing an impression of my Grandad Bob shuffling towards the kitchen to make a cuppa at times. But it's all progress, if you told me at ANY time in my life I'd be able to run 10km in little I've an hour- I would call ya bullshit on that (then owe you a beer cause I'd be wrong). A friend of mine (hi Alliey if you read this) suggested when I get back to the UK about signing up for a 10km, so that's on the plan list...but I'm not committed enough to jump into that just yet (but maybe watch this space?)

Living With The Wild Life

Now there's less people here, there is much more wildlife finding its way out of the jungle and into the village. We've scorpions in the sink, a snake in my shack and almost daily we see Giant Hornbills. We see snakes at least once a week, and woodpeckers. We go out fishing every few days (I just go to soak up the sun, and not actually fish). We have about 50 baby chickens, or chicklets as we call then and monkeys causing chaos in the house, and standoffs with Gary (the big daddio, dog-sized leader) at 6am in the kitchen. 

About a week ago I went to the zipline park of a bit of relaxing in the trees. So I lay down on one of the platforms and the whole family of monkeys come down, this time I'm in their house so I make no attempt to chase them away with the broom. We're "hanging out" for about 45 minutes when one decides to have a rummage in my backpack, so I pick the bag up and Gary does not like this and starts YANKING on my hair! To add insult to injury then proceeds to start humping his missus about 20cm from my face. I hate monkeys. 

Now for that clickbait title. 

We have a dog here, she's a lovely island dog and likes to lick your leg and give people hi-5's. She spends most of her time either sleeping or going for jungle adventures, so she often comes back with tics or fleas. So twice a month I give her a bath (a fun time where I wear my bikini and lock myself in the shower with her so she can't run away). When I gave her the last one, I noticed a small lump on her side. Now, she's about 7 years old, which is ancient in Cambodian Island Dog years. So I suddenly assume the worse and I do what everyone does when they have an ailment...go onto google. There was a variety of answers, from cancer to a lump of fat, healing bruise...none of these prepared me for when the lump was double the size the next day and I was told that it was most likely a parasite had decided to nest under her skin and now they're hatching and breaking out and flying away. Island paradise, don't you wish you were here?? 

When It Rains It Pours

We've just entered our wet season, which is exciting when your house is shaking next to an instant thunder/lightening combo and trees and bits are getting struck all around you...not so exciting when you're a prisoner to your house for 3 days because of the extreme rain, and you can't hear anyone speak because you have a tin roof, and even just running to the toilet leaves you resembling that scene from Flashdance.

It's in our British nature to gossip about the atmospherical conditions...even more, so that everyone in the UK has been under house arrest for the past 3 months and the only things anyone can talk about is the weather, which provides me with such engaging conversation anytime I ever call any of you because I get at least 3 different accounts of the Celcius reading and cloud coverage.

"It was beautiful last week, but its taken a turn today, but it should be nice again by Tuesday. They say it'll hit about 80°!"

"About a week ago it was so sunny, about 29°, 30°, now it's a bit overcast, but should be back to sunshine in a couple days"

"You would've loved the sun here a few days ago! 80°! Now it's back to British summer again...cloudy"

Etc etc you get the idea. Bloody hell! I'm really scraping the barrel for things to say now that I'm talking about the weather. So I'll wrap it up here. 

What's Next?

This is gonna be my last island entry for a little while as in a couple of days time I head to the capital, Phnom Penh as I get ready to begin my 1500km (900miles) cycle around Cambodia! I'm gonna be making the most of the lack-of-tourists in Corona season and visit some provinces I haven't seen, and tourist attractions I haven't seen without tourists. 

As for plans after that- who knows! My visa is dependant on what Cambodia wants to do with me. The overland crossings to Thailand, Laos and Vietnam are all still closed for tourists. My visas are being extended month-by-month, so hopefully, I can get a few more in before they decide to turf me out on a $1000 flight back to London. 

I've signed a contract that I'm not allowed to say too much about it online, but I can say it's working in Finland for the Christmas season. Now, this is all dependant on flu-season in Europe, when tourism opens up again, as well as many other factors. So who knows what the latter half of the year will bring! But for now, I'm making the most of my time in The Kingdom of Wonder, and all the dragons we have here.