Battambang, bricks, a bat cave and beyond

22nd December 2017

Royal Hotel, Battambang

A very pleasant 28c

The weather took a very chilly turn about a week ago, a bit of a shock to the system specially as we'd just got into the swing of setting off early, 0615/0630, in order to miss the heat of the day.  Suddenly we were plunged into coolness.  When I say cool, I mean 16-18c, so not VERY cool.  We have decided we quite like the early starts so we are continuing with them, cool or not.  It's made cycling and sleeping easier, that's for sure, but I don't have a fleece any more so I'm having to use my sarong as a 'wrap' in the evenings.  Don't worry though, it's heading back into the 30s this weekend.

Long shadows, early morning, heading north

We have spent a few dusty, days on the road in rural Cambodia since Phnom Penh, all in all easy riding.  Dead pan flat with the occasional lumpety bumpety, washboard surface, but nothing too awful.  I've been a bit remiss with the whole Wat thing, we don't visit them very often (Angkor Wat is obviously the exception but even then BW will get Wat'ed out very quickly I'm sure) but some of the temples we have passed have been quite interesting in the sense that many of them are very 'rustic' and often a bit dilapidated.  So I've taken a few photos lately:

Colourful ladies welcoming you to the temple

The houses, usually built on stilts, seem to have gotten higher and with more expansive roofs as we've moved towards Battambang.  Many of them have quite fancy staircases (metal as opposed to wood) and often there is the poor relation (the old house) falling down to the side of the new one.  A sign of prosperity perhaps? 

Huge, blue tiled roof extending around the house

Taming the serpent

A puncture on BW's bike drew a bit of a crowd on one of the days, luckily it wasn't too hot.  No pressure, just keep on looking for that elusive piece of wire ........

How many is that now Dave?

Trucks and vans are generally overloaded with all manner of things, including people.  At the moment it's wedding season so the transportation of wedding paraphernalia is common, not only are the chairs stacked well above the legal limit (if there is one) there are also people sitting ON TOP of the chairs, which from where I sit on my bicycle I can see them rocking and rolling with the camber of the road.  Sometimes, if there's room, they will string a hammock between items and have a little nap!  To circumvent the rocking and rolling problem, some trucks have huge wheels at the back of their vehicles, a bit like those jacked-up cars we sometimes see, except here this is an excuse to load even MORE 'stuff' on top and on the back of the vehicle.

The driver is having a nap in his hammock at the front.

Industries along this stretch of road, running south of the Tonle Sap, include pottery, brick-making, rice, pineapples and fishing.  The old kilns have been replaced by huge, modern buildings, presumably because they can fire more bricks at a time. 

Old kiln

In one of the villages we came across a house (Chinese) with a huge bat decorating its doorway.  When I went closer to photograph it I could see fairy lights strapped to the body and wings, and a huge light bulb in its mouth.  How amazingly scary would that look lit up at night, particularly as there's often no street lighting!

The bat cave!

Children feature quite highly in any cycle ride through Cambodia.  The constant 'hello' and 'bye bye' never fails to make me smile (except when my shoulder and neck have frozen and to turn my head and wave causes me so much pain all I can do is grimace); yesterday I even had an 'I love you'!  Today, while trying to find the old tram sheds at Battambang railway station (I thought it would be a good photo opportunity) led us into what I can only describe as a shanty town.  People living in semi-permanent structures that had been 'patched' with cardboard, corrugated iron, plastic sheeting, pretty much anything they could get their hands on I guess.  While walking away from the area we spotted 3 children, aged 3 or 4, playing in the dirt.  They began by shouting the usual 'hello' but then one of them ran towards Dave and another towards me, arms stretched and smiling, and hugged us (our legs, they were so small) like we were long lost friends.  We were both quite taken aback.  They hung on for a minute while the cynic in me waited for the hand out gesture, meaning give me money, but it didn't come.  They had a hug then went back to their game.  That was a lovely moment.

One of 4 brothers who greeted us on the road

Next stop Siem Reap.

Happy Christmas everyone, see you on the other side!

Laters

All the Ps in Phnom Penh

15th December 2017
Sassi Guesthouse, Phnom Penh
Hot, hot, hot

This post was going to be entitled Pol Pot, Pavement Parking and Prostitutes in Phnom Penh, but I decided it was too flippant to lump the Pol Pot regime in with the rest of the Ps.  More on that later.

My last post ended with us arriving in Kampot.  What a lovely, chilled place that was.  We did very little, along with the rest of the population, except wander aimlessly, eat, drink, sleep, repeat.  Then we moved onto Kep, all of 24kms away, but with a completely different vibe.  Firstly, there was a beach and secondly the town is very spread out with no real 'centre' as such.

The first thing we did was meet up with Katy and Ed, friends of friends, who happen to be in Cambodia at the same time as us, also travelling on bicycles.  We chewed the cud over breakfast, all things bicycle touring, and then reunited in the evening for dinner and a few beers.  It just so happens we're more or less cycling the same route in Cambodia so while we all ended up in Phnom Penh together the next time we will get together is probably going to be Siem Reap over Christmas.  It's a small world!

We stayed at the very lovely Bacoma Gueshouse in one of the round bungalows.  The grounds of the guesthouse are jungle that's been tamed and act to keep everywhere feeling very cool.  In fact, we rarely used the fan in the bungalow and there was a point one evening when I almost reached for a 2nd layer, but resisted the temptation.  We rode around the National Park early in the morning and while we heard a lot of wildlife, we saw very little.  Even so, it was a lovely thing to do.  On our way back to the guesthouse we took a detour along the new road, that's so wide it really should be called a boulevard, where we found some of the old burned out Modernist buildings.

Mr Millipede

Signposting in Kep National Park

Kep National Park

Graffiti on a burned out building

Boats waiting to take passengers to Rabbit Island

Kep was once a playground for the French elite before the Khmer Rouge came to power, and although it's small and sleepy now it definitely has visions of grandeur.  The huge roundabout at the entrance to the town, plus the new 'boulevards' being built, all point to a bigger future.

Two long, dusty traffic-filled days later, we arrived in Phnom Penh.  If you arrived in Phnom Penh on a bicycle not having ridden into another Asian City before, you might have had at least one heart attack.  It's crazy but it works, somehow.  An expat in Kep, when asked about the number of Lexus cars in Cambodia, said (he was Irish) "ah, now in Cambodia you're either a Big Man, or you're nothing and Big Guys drive a Lexus".  It turns out they also drive anything that's huge and shiny, has air conditioning and ensures you sit higher than the rest of the traffic.  Today I even saw a Rolls Royce.  Pavement parking ensures that pedestrians have to walk in the road with the rest of the moving traffic, I have no idea what anyone in a wheelchair or with a pushchair would do.

On the way to Phnom Penh

And so to the Killing Fields (Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre) and The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly a school that became the notorious S-21 Detention Centre.  I'm not sure I can add anything to what has already been said about what the Cambodian people went through during the Pol Pot years, I can only talk about how harrowing I found the experience.  Astonishing, is that The Khmer Rouge killed almost a quarter of the Cambodian population (nobody really knows how many) in the relatively short time (between April 1975 and January 1979) they were in power.  It happened in my lifetime but I'm ashamed to say I remember very little about it. 

What I saw and heard while visiting these two sites was indeed awful.  Very little is left to the imagination, and perhaps that's how it should be.  Personal testimonies of survivors, photographs, paintings and original torture implements, all paint a very dark picture.  There's no smiling or laughing in these places, it's very sombre.  It's not an easy place to be an observer, but observe and learn we must.  I urge you to do your own research on this subject.

We both came away with a new found respect for the lovely Cambodian people we have met on our travels.  It's staggering to think that survivors over the age of 40 will have some experience of this.  Equally stupefying is that all the older people we see in the villages we cycle through somehow managed to survive the terrible conditions, starvation and the murder of family members, yet they move on, with dignity. 

The Pagoda at The Killing Fields, to commemorate those who died

Another P - prostitutes.  There are some notorious bars and clubs in Phnom Penh and today, unknowingly, we had lunch at one of them.  BW fancied a felafal and it was only after we'd sat down and ordered we noticed the rest of the clientele.  The food was lovely, and it was an interesting lunch, not least because I managed to indulge one of my favourite pastimes of 'earwigging' but my lips are sealed - for the time being anyway!

Pavement parking, no room for pedestrians!

Laters

Koh Kong and the Cardamoms

7th December 2017
Aspara Kampot City Hotel, Kampot
Everything has stopped.  It's too hot.

The ride from Koh Kong took us along Highway 48, through the very beautiful Koh Kong Corridor, also known as the South Cardamom Forest.  It's probably the longest stretch of untouched (by palm oil production) jungle we've come across in SE Asia, apart from the East West highway in Malaysia, where for 100kms or so on the eastern side the jungle is (was, in 2009) pristine.

South Cardamom Forest

The road undulates and then climbs up and back down to waterfalls at Tatai.  Directly out of the village there is a fairly steep climb, which everyone had warned us about, but it turned out not to be that steep at all and it's all of 3 kms.  Traffic was light at this point, mostly motorbikes and cars, a few trucks but perfectly doable.  We met 2 Dutch cyclists, brothers, on the road, and they had just come from Trapeung Rung, they recommended asking the police about homestays when we arrived at the checkpoint. 

Ooh, err ...... we weren't lucky enough to see any

We had found homestays on the web, several of which were on Booking.com or another site called Priceline, which I'd never heard of, and we found one we really liked the look of.  We asked around about the homestay but nobody knew where it was, and we simply couldn't work out it's whereabouts given the numerous alleyways and lack of roads.  So after lunch at a local hostelry we set off to ask at the police checkpoint.  Mistake number 1.  We showed the name of the homestay to the officer who could speak a little English, he explained to another officer what we wanted and he immediately got on the phone.  'Sit down' they said.  Fifteen minutes later, just at the point we were wondering what on earth was going on, a young man on a scooter turned up.  He is not, it turns out, from the homestay we asked for at all, but quite clearly a tout.  Of course he wanted to take us to somewhere that did eco tours, was 'only' $8 a night and very friendly.  When I said we wanted to go to THAT particular homestay they said 'no more'.  Oh yes, that old ruse.  So now we have a situation where the police have a tout working for them and no doubt everyone is getting some kind of kickback. 

It is now the hottest part of the day and the sun has decided to come out with a vengeance.  We are hot, tired and in desperate need of a shower and cold beer.  So we give in and go with the tout, not before telling him that a) we are not paying $8 (the going rate is $5) and b) if we don't like it we won't be staying at all.  The room was OK.  The bathroom had a squat loo and a mandi (you bathe by swishing cold water from a large receptacle).  It didn't look anywhere near as nice as the one we would have liked to go to, but hey ....... We got the room for $5 but I wonder how much the landlady received, given all the hassle and work that goes with renting a room to foreigners, after the police and tout had their cut. 

Sunset at Trapeung Rung

The next day we come down out of the jungle and reach Botum Sakor.  It was still early so we ate and then carried on to Sre Ambel.  About 10kms from our destination we happened upon 3 more cyclists, 2 French and 1 Dutch.  After a long chat and exchange of details, the French were going in the direction we had just come, but Jack was heading our way so we set off together.  We arrived in Sre Ambel just as school was finishing and suddenly we were engulfed by children on bicycles, or foot, all shouting 'hello'.  The next thing I was being taken by a young lady to 'her guesthouse' while Jack had been accosted by a gentleman who wanted to show him his place.  We ended up staying at different guesthouses (I think Jack's was better than ours but I couldn't bear to say 'no' to the girl who had escorted me through the village) but we met up later and ate at the restaurant also belonging to the young lady.

On the road to Sre Ambel

We said our goodbyes as Jack was heading towards Phnom Penh, while we were cutting off south to Kampot and Kep.  However, next morning, just as we're about to take the turning for Kampot, along comes Jack, so we stopped and took a farewell photograph.

By now Highway 48 is full of traffic, mostly trucks.  Sections of the road are being re-graded so the rain from the night before was by now quite muddy, bright red mud!  We mostly cycle on the asphalt lane to the side of the highway, sometimes being forced off by the trucks.  Twice more that day we bumped into cyclists, one from Switzerland and one from Russia.  In case you're counting, that's 7 in 2 days!

At Veal Renh we find a pleasant, new (in fact they are still building the top floor) Chinese-run hotel for $10, although the room has a distinct cabbage odour emanating from the bathroom.  So out comes my trusty disinfectant spray purchased in Germany as an antidote to smelly shoes but we have since discovered has a whole plethora of uses, and the cabbage smell miraculously disappears, for all of an hour.  That evening we are reminded of the trials and tribulations of shopping for half decent food when on the backroads of countries like Cambodia.  Snacks and whisky abound, but what we're looking for is something that will go with peanut butter or just some nice biscuits will do.  We find a little cake shop which has to suffice, and actually, the swissroll-like affair was quite nice.

Children playing and one of them being a 'cheeky chappy'

Whooah!

The traffic lessens and we are seeing rice paddies, water buffalo and freshly harvested rice is drying on mats in the intense heat.  As we get closer to Kampot there are more and more stalls selling food and other commodities.  It's the dry season and that means weddings, hence the competitions being run by beer companies to win a honeymoon and $3,000 spending money.  Wedding venues are popping up all along the side of the road.

Drying rice, praying it doesn't rain

Could have done with a dip myself at this point!

We arrive in Kampot at 1130 and head straight for one of the 'traveller' cafes for breakfast.  BW has the full monty and I have fruit salad with yogurt; we both have a banana milkshake.  We find the hotel and after a cold can of Angkor beer each virtually pass out in the heat.  Around 4pm, when the sun has waned, we wander around this lovely old town.  I think we're going to like it here in Kampot.

Kampot

Laters

Borders and haircuts

2nd December 2017
Nathy Koh Kong Hotel, Koh Kong
35c

It was only during the last 2 or 3 days in Thailand that we saw women wearing traditional Thai dress.  A wrapped skirt, looking very much like a sarong, but in beautiful fabric.  During the day they wear plainer, printed cotton wraps, but in the evening they will often have woven golden thread, making the fabric look iridescent, like peacocks.  Highway 3 was it's usual busy self, although we slipped down onto the coast road to cover the last 20 kms to Khlong Yai, a town far enough away from the Cambodian border not to be called a border town.

Road-widening scheme for approx. 50kms to the border

Some borders are worse than others for scams, and sometimes you even get a nice surprise and there are none, like when crossing from Nicaragua into Honduras.  We were expecting the rip offs tto end all rip offs knowing the history of both these countries, we were absolutely gobsmacked when we were permitted to simply sail through. The Thailand to Cambodia crossing at Hat Lek has a certain reputation but Poipet (the one we will be taking on the way back) is apparently worse.  Great.  The Thai part of the crossing is easy.  The Cambodian side a different kettle of fish.  We dodged the "Quarantine" window, where we were supposed to complete a form, I think they might stick a thermometer in your ear, or similar, and then relieve you of 200 baht.  I think Dave mentioned something about being fit and healthy enough to get there on a bike, that should suffice.  We eventually found the right place to go for our visas, the office with the blacked out windows and "Staff Only" sign, oh of course!

It felt like we were going into the Lion's den.  At first there were only 3 men in uniform, all looking rather dour, but cool and collected, after all the air conditioning was on and it was about 8 degrees in there, which made us sweat even more profusely.  We handed over our passports, completed visa forms and passport photos, and I removed the $60 fee from the leg of my cycling shorts.  The conversation went something like this:

Main Man:  You pay in Baht
Me:  No, in USD
Main Man:  You pay in Baht
Me:  No, in USD  There you go, $60 for 2
Main Man:  **chats with two others in Khmer**

By now he has counted the USD and spread the notes on the table.

Main Man:  (pulls Press Release from his in-tray) $37, new price (pushes $ back towards me)
Me:  No, that's for the e-visa, $30 is the price (I push it back to him)
This happens two or three times.

Main man now inspecting the $ notes I have given him very closely

Nothing wrong with that!

Main Man:  This no good (pointing to the $5 note)
Me:  What's wrong with it?
Main Man:  No good for me (pointing to the crease in the note)
Me:  Oh, that's fine it's just a crease, no problem, the bank'll sort that out
Main Man: (getting a bit heated now)  No good for me.  Good for you, no good for me.  No visa.

It was then I spotted him running his nail along the crease.  This was a Mexican standoff.  You should also know that another 3 men in uniform have joined the party, making 6 officials in total.

BW decides to try and break the deadlock by being nice to the Main Man (something I would have found very difficult to do at this point) and suggesting that he may have some Baht, couldn't be certain, but he would check.  At which point I snatched the $5 from the table and gave the Main Man a big smile.  In comes Dave with his tool bag and proceeds to tip all the bike tools onto the table and 'miraculously' finds the Baht that was needed to cover the $5 note matey wouldn't accept.  I don't think it worked out quite as they expected as all they got was an extra $1 between the 6 of them and I begrudged them that!  Hah, life on the road.

The condition of the road straight away deteriorates, with trucks swerving to avoid what can only be described as a cavernous hole in the middle of the road, approximately a metre across.  The roads seem incredibly wide and there is a distinct lack of traffic.  Children we meet are waving and shouting 'hello' and 'what is your name?', many women and girls seem to be dressed in their pyjamas while others look as though they are expecting a bit of a cold snap, wearing hats and jumpers, despite the temperature being 34c.

We are in Cambodia. 

Fantastic!

Laters

The view from 'Fat Sams'

BW looking slightly Hitler-esque after his hairdresser had a go!

Cambodia here we come

29^th November 2017

Pop Hostel, Trat

Hot and humid, with a breeze

Trat is the place to be if you want to take a boat to Koh Chang.  It's also the main transport hub from Thailand to Cambodia if you're using the Hat Lek border crossing.  We've been reading up on border scams which includes a fine for no passport photo (we now have 4, although what they do with them is a bit of a mystery), a bogus health inspection certificate (apparently we just ignore the request and walk straight through) and several other dubious practices that backpackers need to be aware of most of which involve the transport companies overcharging. 

We left Highway 3 for a while, travelling along the lovely coast road between Rayong and Laem Maephim and we were very pleasantly surprised to find a cycle path.  So much more relaxed, less traffic and generally greener, plus the added bonus of beautiful beaches.  Interestingly, European beaches usually have sunbeds laid out in twos, with an umbrella and table to share.  In Thailand, the deckchairs and tables are set up for families, usually 6-8 people, and eating and drinking is a favourite activity suitably catered for by the many permanent stalls on the beach, or, the travelling carts selling drinks and snacks, ringing bells to advertise their wares. 

Bike path, lasted for a couple of hundred kms

Family deckchair setup

But return to Highway 3 we must.  The road begins to undulate approx. 20kms before Trat, otherwise it's dead flat.  One particularly hot lunch time I spotted this poor guy, up a ladder, trying to fix whatever was wrong with the hundreds of wires entering and leaving this particular junction.  He wasn't even breaking a sweat.  Meanwhile, some girl guides were being led through town by a young woman, who, as a younger woman myself would have called a 'bossy moo'!  She got to wave the flag and shout a lot.

Up a ladder, in 34c, aye aye aye ......

Girl Power!

Trat is a very typical Thai city, not much for the average tourist except transport and accommodation.  There is a fabulous night market selling just about anything you could possibly wish for, and all of it so beautifully presented.  Last night we marvelled at the thousands of Mynah birds hanging around the centre of town.  We're not sure if Mynah's murmurate (is there such a word?) like Starlings, but, they were certainly gathering and making one hell of a noise.

Tomorrow we head down the narrow strip of land belonging to Thailand to the Cambodian border at Hat Lek.  On the left are the Cardamom Mountains in Cambodia, on the right is the ocean.  We are moving on .............

Laters

PS wildlife excitement, yesterday I saw a Raquet-Tailed Drongo!

Heat and grime

24th November 2017
B J Boutique Residence, Rayong
Hot and humid

We thought 5 days of relaxing in Bangkok would have set us up nicely for coming to terms with the heat of being on the road.  To a certain extent it has but when the thermometer jumps from 31 to 35, and the sun makes her presence felt in no uncertain terms, all bets are off.  Regular stops for cold drinks and a little sit down in the shade is definitely the order of the day.  We've become a bit obsessed with cappuccino frappes and our old favourite chocolate milk is back on the menu (there's scientific evidence suggesting recovering after exercise is enhanced by drinking chocolate milk).  Today I "remembered" around the 60km mark that I hadn't eaten since breakfast and started to feel a little peculiar.  Note to self: don't rely on BW to suggest food.

A cappuccino frappe

Highway 3 has been a bit of a bugger to be honest.  The further away from Bangkok we get and the closer to the Cambodian border the lighter the traffic.  We're even getting some jungle now and yesterday we saw a troop of monkeys.  Unfortunately they were picking around in a ditch of horrible trash looking for food, but still .......  In theory we have a lane to ourselves, but more often than not we share it with motorbikes coming in the opposite direction (the barrier in the middle is so high, or deep, they can't just slip across to the side they need to be, so they just ride the wrong way) also cars and trucks who have decided to stop for a drink, to buy some food or simply to have a chat.  It's all very cosy.

A cold drink stop, and we met these lovely pair

Haven't spotted a live one yet!

Highway 3, not ALL bad, some smiles along the way

New housing 'estate' on the outskirts of Rayong,

love the cheesy grin!

We skirted around the main part of Pattaya and ended up staying at Jomtien Beach.  A nice, if narrow, beach in parts crammed with beds and umbrellas for tourists, and the sea was a very acceptable 29c.  Even I went in for a swim. The resort is a mix of new high rise concrete monstrosities and the old, traditional Thai hotels, bars and restaurants.  This morning I was chatting to the lovely lady who cooked our breakfast and it would appear that business has been slow for the past couple of years.  Apparently, tourists now like to go to Laos or Cambodia. We didn't see much of the "sexpats" Pattaya is known for, or at least, it wasn't evident on the streets of Jomtien.

Jomtien

We are now going to comb the outskirts of Rayong for food and a cold beer.  Wish us luck!

Laters

Arrivals and departures

20 November 2017
Quite near Bangkok airport
Raining, 32c

Today we finally left Bangkok, having settled quite nicely into the Orchid Hotel 153 for 5 nights a beautiful old Thai building on the outskirts of the Koh San Rd area of Bangkok. Our flight from Athens, via Istanbul, was uneventful, apart from the inordinate amount of time it took to check the bikes in.  Something to do with a printer not working.

These days we like to settle in to a place, take our time to familiarise ourselves with the new currency etc, and get over the inevitable jet lag.  Despite having been to Thailand many times before the sensory overload never ceases to amaze.  It’s hectic, but for the most part polite.  The smells include a combination of foods, incense, sewers, heady flowers like Jasmine and, my favourite, Frangipani and music mixed in with car horns, drumming and bell ringing from the temples.  We love it.


After 3 days of wandering around the Koh San Road area, eating lovely Thai food, drinking freshly made fruit juices and generally relaxing and sleeping when we needed to, along comes Claire from Saigon.  Claire was on holiday and decided, at the last minute, to hop on a flight from HCM to BKK to spend the weekend with us.  What a joy, we hadn’t seen each other for almost 6 months, so talk, talk, talk we must.  While Dave put the bikes back together Claire and I took a jaunt on the river, a very cool, literally, way to see Bangkok and visited the Taling Chan floating market where we ate the most wonderful prawns and mussel fritters, drank passion fruit juice and had a massage that I will not forget in a long time.  I still feel bruised, but I’m sure it will have done me good!  This morning we waved goodbye, Claire setting off on her journey back to Blighty and us towards the Hat Lek border and Cambodia.

The lovely Claire

Lotus Flowers (I think)

Beautifully presented food at Taling Chan floating market

A box of sweet and savoury pancakes

Traffic-wise, Bangkok is horrendous and the city is now huge, so plod we must.  The road we are taking towards Chon buri is an industrial corridor, full of household names like Toyota, Honda, Komatsu and Nissan, so even though we have left the madness of Bangkok behind 54 kms on it’s still incredibly busy.  The trouble with getting out of cities like Bangkok is the time it takes, but there’s nothing to be done other than just plod.  We stopped for lunch at a stall along the way and both had noodles with pork.  I had forgotten that stalls supply drinking water, you help yourself to a glass, or in this case a plastic cup, and ice from a bucket.  In the UK we might have salt and pepper, HP and Tomato sauce on the table, in Thailand there are chilli flakes, chilli paste, peanuts, sugar and chilli oil.  Our lovely lunch, with a mango shake and fresh coconut juice, cost the grand total of 150 baht (about £3).

Thousands of schoolchildren, a big event at the Grand Palace

Fixing boat engines in Bangkok

Lunch

When it stops raining we will head out to try and buy some bread to go with our peanut butter (trying to buy bread that isn’t packed with sugar is a challenge) and milk for our porridge, acquired at the Tesco Lotus in Bangkok.  That’ll be breakfast and lunch for tomorrow.

I hear it’s cold and wet in the UK.  Still, it’s nearly Christmas!

Laters

Albania, Greece and beyond

13^th November 2017

Athens Moka Hotel
A cool and rainy 16 degrees

Get yourself a cuppa, it’s going to take a while .........

So here we are, just about at the end of the European part of our tour (4500 kms), in Athens.  My last entry was to say that the tablet had bitten the dust, so going back to Albania and The Llagoro Pass, this is how it’s all gone since:

The Llagoro Pass in southern Albania is one of those places that people long to do, to drive, or cycle it.  It’s elevation is  only 1024 metres but the gradients are unkind and the climb is less than 12 kms.  Most of the way we saw the 10% signs, but they are either giving averages, or, they’ve lost the numbers 1-5 because BW’s computer stops recording once it’s reached 12.5% (for some unknown reason) and it was blank for most of the climb.  The weather was hot and sunny, not so great on the way up, but led to amazing views and clarity at the top and on the way down.  There is a video, which we will be posting on YouTube soon, link to follow.

The Llagoro Pass

After making it to Sarande we hopped on a ferry to Corfu, where we didn’t do very much at all.  We met a couple of Aussies, Therese and Nick, who we managed to meet again in Athens, they were also touring on bicycles and we have unashamedly taken all the information and experience they could throw at us and used it with regards to boxing up the bikes, transport to the airport etc, so thanks guys!

It's always nice to find a Bristol

From Corfu we made our way down to Lefkadis, and onto Kefallonia.  Finding ferry information in Greece is not easy. Everywhere you go there are advertisements for ferries to every corner of Greece but when you enquire there are very few, ‘that’s the summer schedule’ we heard time and time again.  The internet is even worse, but, we found enough information to know that we couldn’t get from any of the islands to Patra, despite the ferries destined to and from Italy stopping at the islands.

On the way to kefalonia

Kefalonia

Kefallonia was our favourite island.  At this time of year not very touristy, but the weather was still 24 and sunny. The geography lends itself to goats and sheep, oh, and tourism, although it hasn’t succumbed in quite the same way as other places in Greece.

From Kefallonia we took the only ferry available to us to Kyllini, on the mainland.  The cycling between Kyllini and Athens, has, for the most part, not been great.  Patras was a port town with seemingly more problems than most cities.  We watched in horror as 4 police officers in full riot gear, on 2 motorbikes, raided a café opposite the passenger ferry terminal, forcing everyone to scatter.  Young men all of them, looking for a better life.  Further down the road we came across a massive factory, empty of the thousands of workers who at some point worked there, now home to refugees and the tons of rubbish they produce.

We passed over the Corinth Canal, still impressive the second time around, but only a small vessel went through this time so no WOW photos.

Corinth canal

And so onto Athens.  Parts of the coast were beautiful but sadly now neglected.  Like any major city, the outlying towns all, eventually, begin to merge into one long suburb.  The traffic was horrendous, the pollution worse than we’ve experienced in a long time and just not the kind of cycling we wanted to be doing.

On the way to Athens

Then it was chores.  We needed to work out how to box up the bikes and get them to the airport.  Recommendations from Therese and Nick meant we sorted that one pretty quickly by contacting Marios at www.cyclelovers.gr who is boxing up the bikes (E30 for both) and Greek Economy Transfer who are taxiing us, the bikes and luggage to the airport for E58.  The other thing I had to do was get a lump in my armpit checked out. We had a bank holiday weekend to contemplate the options, in the end we headed for a private clinic armed with all the information I could glean from Mr Google and the NHS websites. After a very thorough examination, ultrasound and blood tests, I was deemed fit and healthy and the proud owner of a fatty lump, something to do with my age and being post menopausal.  Phew.  Onward and upward.

Changing of the guard

Traffic is a huge problem in Athens

The Athenian Riviera left a bit to be desired but we really enjoyed Cape Sounion.  By the time we were on our way back to Athens to deliver the bikes to Marios the weather had changed. It’s cooler (most of the time), today it rained for the first time since we’ve been in Greece and the temperature dropped to 16 at one point, but it’s still very mild.  Remember Austria in August?  Eight degrees and 4 layers of clothing; Greece is not so bad.

Cape Sounion

Tomorrow we fly to Bangkok.  We have been shopping and bought a camera, I’ve decided I don’t like using the phone, and anyway, BW has the phone most of the time for navigation which is why we don’t have that many photos on the road.  BW has renewed his beard trimmer and we have a shiny, new laptop, on which I am now typing!  I can’t bring myself to chuck the foldable keyboard, so we’re going to keep it as a spare for now.  We’ve had a right good clear out too.  The little Chinese cooker (which was brilliant by the way) was dumped at the campsite at Cape Sounion, along with the coolbag, some clothes and a variety of herbs and spices and cooking accoutrements we no longer need. 

We’ve also given ourselves a good talking to. We’ve been guilty of ‘passing through’ Europe without seeing most of it as a destination.  I don’t know if that’s something to do with our mindset, we always think that Europe is very doable from the UK, just a short flight or ferry away.  Or perhaps because when we set off we always saw Europe as the ‘training ground’ for the rest of the trip.  We have now decided that everywhere is a destination to be explored!

We’re currently in dispute with Booking.com over accommodation we booked through them, and consequently have moved to a hotel, for the same price, in another part of town.  It was the Athens Marathon yesterday, meaning fewer reasonable hotel rooms available.  So we have ended up in a nice hotel, clean and basic, but in a rather grotty part of the city.  When walking to and from the hotel it’s common to see drug deals and prostitutes, but hey, I think you get that in most cities.  There are a lot of people sleeping rough too and we think part of the authorities’ attempt at moving people on and cleaning up at the same time, is to hose down the doorways early every morning.  What a life, I can’t imagine.

Rough sleeper

In the past we have felt time and/or financial restrictions, some of them perceived rather than real.  This time we have let go of the ‘budgetitis’ strings a bit and are taking things a tad easier, hence Marios  boxing up the bike and taking a taxi to the airport.  We know there will be times when we will end up in parts of the world where it’s going to be difficult to find a decent hotel, let alone a restaurant with a menu, and therefore limiting our ability to spend money.  So while we are in tourist areas, and there are nice hotels and restaurants, we are making use of them. Having said that, we still can’t find it in our hearts to use really expensive hotels/restaurants, the kinds our friends/family use on a regular basis, but we’re getting better at it!  

On the subject of touristy areas, can I just say that after several days, let alone weeks or months (as in South America), in the wilds of some continents, it’s so NICE to be in a tourist area.  There’s the obvious stuff like food, hotels and beer, the icing on the cake is meeting people who share the same language, possibly sense of humour, and, if you’re really lucky, those people are also cycle tourists!  Today, while in McDonalds (I know, tut tut, but sometimes it just has to be done, coffee and wifi E2, it was chuffing it down with rain) I overheard a guy trying to organise for his bicycle to be boxed to fly to France tomorrow.  What’s the chances of that happening?  I mean, we haven’t been in McDonalds for years!  We got chatting, were able to put them in touch with Marios and had a chat about routes and experiences.  It’s just a lovely thing meeting like-minded people, especially when we seem to be getting a bit thin on the ground.  It’ll be interesting to see how many we meet in Asia.

We were last in Thailand in 2009 and before that 1989, the differences were HUGE.  Can’t wait to see what’s happened in the last 8 years.  Good news - our friend Claire is going to be in Asia while we are in Bangkok, so with a bit of time to spare she decided to hop on a flight from HCM to Bangkok and spend the weekend with us!  Exciting or what?  We have been away almost 5 months and while we WhatsApp friends and family all the time, it’s not the same is it?  We’ve already earmarked the floating market, a foot massage and some clothes shopping; BW will probably be building the bikes!

I apologise for the lack of detail in this entry but I’m not very good at this ‘catching up’ business, I much prefer to write entries on a daily, or at least weekly, basis.  I bet you’re looking forward to that aren’t you?

Laters

All boxed up and ready to go!