Pleiku to Dak Glei

Posted on by bryanmkevan

More pictures than words this week. I’m not feeling too well.

I made a mistake. The morning before we got to Dak Glei, I was dealing with a small headache and some achiness/tiredness I just chalked up to the climbing that we’d been doing. But the guesthouse we were at had no window and was pretty dirty, and we were both eager to get back on the road. So I took some ibuprofen, forced myself to drink a liter of water, and pushed through the day. Turns out that that morning I was dehydrated, and by the time we rolled into Dak Glei, the small headache had turned into a nasty fever and dizzyness. I spent a night not getting a wink of sleep, my core temperature doing strange fluctuations and with Sophie forcing me to drink water and isotonic drinks. We weren’t planning to do a rest day today, but I certainly wasn’t up to the huge climbing (~4500 ft total) that awaits us tomorrow.

Just getting into the highlands.
Just getting into the highlands.

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Stung Treng, Cambodia to Pleiku, Vietnam

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A long post today, with a lot of history, a little about the riding, and a few pictures. It’s hard to capture this part of Cambodia and Vietnam with just a few pictures. The last week of riding has been a little emotionally heavy at times, but we’re finally through Cambodia and on into Vietnam.

President Nixon shows you where we've been riding.
President Nixon shows you where we’ve been riding.

Ratanakiri province is along the Eastern border of Cambodia with Vietnam. Its name comes from the Khmer and Sanskrit words for “gem mountain,” named for what the province is known for. As we move closer to Vietnam, the rolling hills have grown larger, and many of the villages along the route contain gem mines. As we have moved East, towns and cities have grown more remote and isolated. I have never really been more aware of being “foreign” in a place than along this stretch.

Ratanakiri is home to the minority group the Khmer Loeu, and contains just 1% of Cambodia’s population. Towns outside the provincial capital of Banlung are organized into vaguely communist communities of around 50 families engaged in subsistence agriculture. The province’s infrastructure, even though it has been massively improved over the last five years, remains the poorest in Cambodia. Almost one out of four children die before the age of five, and three quarters of the population is illiterate. 

Banlung. A nice town on the frontier.
Banlung. A nice town on the frontier.

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Siem Reap to Stung Treng

Posted on by bryanmkevan

Nothing but good in this post. Good news, good riding, good weather, good company.

Sophie and I were glad to get out of Siem Reap. Car people, I guess, would describe it as going from 0 to 60 to 0 very quickly. From rural shacks without running water to suddenly massive resorts, towering hotels, tuk-tuk drivers, and tourists and then suddenly back to rural shacks without running water. Such is Cambodia. After 30 final kilometers on the main highway, we turned north at an unmarked turnoff at Dam Daek towards the rural northeast of the country.

Northern Cambodia.
Northern Cambodia.

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Sisophon to Siem Reap

Posted on by bryanmkevan

We’ve reached Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, a very fascinating old Khmer Empire temple and Cambodia’s main tourist attraction. It is also a UNESCO heritage site and draws tourists from all around the world. The Khmer Empire was the dominant force in Southeast Asia for hundreds of years until the 15th century when the capital of Angkor was captured by the Ayutthaya Kingdom. Things went downhill from there for the remnants of the Khmer and Cambodia as a whole, as the region was repeatedly conquered, exploited, vassalized and colonized for the next 400 years by Siam (Thailand), Vietnam, France and the United States. That is where I will stop with respect to recent Cambodian history, only to say that we have seen very few old people here. Such wonderful people, and so welcoming, but there is an undeniably tense feeling that hangs over everything. The country is advancing quickly due to investments from the outside world, and this trip would have been ill-advised, if not logistically and physically impossible on our rigid bike frames, only 15 years ago.

Anyways, the last few days have been an interesting, trying at times, experience to say the least. As we’ve gotten further from the border, the more we have sunk into rural Cambodia and a first-hand, lung, and mouth experience with this country’s dusty, blisteringly hot summer months. For our mothers’ sake, I have not included pictures of the 70km stretch of road from Sisophon to Battambang and instead just leave these pictures of us wearing appropriate safety gear.

I have a nice layer of caked on dirt here.
I have a nice layer of caked on dirt here.

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Bangkok, Thailand to Sisophon, Cambodia

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Sophie and I spent a few days in Bangkok taking care of some important errands before boarding the train to the border at Aranyaprathet and fleeing Thailand. Sophie ended up paying for two days of overstay. These overstay fees had been a source of worry for us, but in retrospect the process of paying the fine (3 min) and the amount ($30) was probably overall a smaller burden than the length of the line to pay the fine in the first place (1.5 hours).

We were allowed to just bring the bikes on the train for a small fee, which was great.
We were allowed to just bring the bikes on the train for a small fee, which was great.

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Chumphon to Prachuap Khiri Khan

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Quick update today. Sophie and I have made it to Prachuap Khiri Khan, which is a small, sort of touristy city on the Gulf of Thailand coast. We’ve sort of settled into a nice beach camping routine, and we spend most of our nights doing just that. We take a day in a hotel every once in awhile, but it’s really hard to beat the stunning beach spots that we’ve been able to camp at. Ditto to the roads that we’ve been riding along, and the food that we get to eat every day. In the end, there isn’t too much to report from this part of the journey but good things. We’re almost over 700km in, and probably about 2-3 days ride from where we’ll bus into Bangkok. The peninsula leg of the trip is almost done, and we plan on celebrating with a moderately priced dinner when we reach Bangkok. The rolling hills have slowly disappeared, and most of our riding has been done on flat coastal roads, sometimes right along the beach past big resorts and hotels. That is, except for today, when we found ourselves riding on the large shoulder of a main highway. After about 3 hours of breathing vehicle fumes, we’re both feeling a little queasy.

Hard to beat this.
Hard to beat this.

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Kapoe to Chumphon

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When I last wrote, Sophie and I were headed towards Ranong at the border with Myanmar in order to do a refresh of our visas. Well, in the end at least I got my visa refreshed by taking a boat to Myanmar, entering the country, leaving the country, then boating back and re-entering Thailand. Sophie on the other hand got pushed through bureaucratic hell and told she has two weeks to leave the country or start paying overstay fees. The fees aren’t bad, like $15 per day, but we’re pushing for Bangkok to be safe and considering a bus or train from Bangkok to Poi Pet at the border of Cambodia. Anyways, three days after that immigration “adventure” brings us to today, where we have crossed the 450km mark and the next “big” town, Chumphon, in our journey. Three days out of Ranong, and the riding has been pretty intense. Very pretty, but very intense.

Sunrise. This is the best time of day to ride, for obvious reasons. It's hot and muggy, but not unbearably so.
Sunrise. This is the best time of day to ride, for obvious reasons. It’s hot and muggy, but not unbearably so.

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Phang Nga to Kapoe

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Departure!

Trial run 2-day tour to Tai Mueang Beach.
Trial run 2-day tour to Tai Mueang Beach.

We are off! After an extended stay in Phang Nga, Sophie’s teaching Princeton in Asia teaching post is over, and my obscure sort of career related obligation in Bangkok is taken care of. I am vaccinated against Japanese Encephalitis, and we are both sharing in the mix of excitement and nerves that accompany the start of a trip like this. For me, it’s almost pure excitement because for two months I’ve been missing being on the road and the rush of endorphins that each day brings. I’ve missed the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance-esque view of my body and bike as a combined machine needing to be continuously monitored and maintained in order to prevent physical and mental deterioration.

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