With the Khmer New Year upon us, we planned to take a bus to Ho Chi Minh City, and asked our guesthouse to schedule our trip. They promised to do so without hesitation, but when we returned to the desk the next day, we were informed that he had to call five bus companies and […]
We’d accomplished quite a lot before noon, but the temperature had been slowly rising all morning. We hadn’t had the option to rent riding jackets, so we were wearing our bulkiest clothing as safety gear on the scooter. In short, it was time to head back to our air conditioned room and cool down. At […]
Since we had several hours to kill before we had to return the scooter, we decided to take all 50 cc’s of glory and cruise around the countryside before returning. We had a great time spotting the the scooters with the largest loads. This one takes the cake, hands down. There was virtually […]
We picked up our scooter as soon as the shop opened, hoping to get an early start and to beat the heat as much as possible. The scooter for this round was not nearly as glamorous as our Vietnam rentals had been- we were assigned an old 50cc with Popeye floor mats. We figured out […]
We rarely travel without a bike, a car, or some other form of transportation, so it was a weird feeling this morning to ride in a tuktuk clear across Siem Reap to the bus station to head toward Phnom Penh. We had booked our tickets at our guesthouse and not given it as much thought […]
Once the day had cooled even a tiny bit, we headed back into town to wander the markets in Siem Reap. We had our eyes on a few things to take home to our families, so we got busy trying to shop. As it turns out, we are two of the world’s worst shoppers. Even […]
After a whole day of sitting on gender neutral bicycle seats in unbearably hot, humid weather, my rear was too raw to sit down comfortably and there was no way I was getting back on that terrible bike seat for another whole day. Running non-stop on our whirlwind tour was catching up to us and […]
Our elephant encounter left us all smiles despite the fact that we really weren’t feeling any better, so we hastened our speed and spent some time climbing the Bayon in the shadowy afternoon light. Although the heat of the day was finally fading, the rocks of the temple were still radiating the stored heat from below […]
The first thing many people think of when they think Southeast Asia is elephants. While they are much more prevalent in Laos and Thailand, they seem to be part of everyday life. They help with agriculture, transportation, logging (unfortunately), and anything else that an animal as common as a horse in the states might be […]
Having done Ta Prohm justice, we were back on the road again, but the cool morning was rapidly turning into a blazing hot afternoon. There’s a reason there are so many people selling cold drinks near the temples and we were buying them like crazy. As we pedaled, not toward anything in particular, we stopped frequently […]
Upon planning our trip, something was prominently missing: bicycles. Our time in Vietnam included some of the most rugged, hostile terrain we have ever seen, cycling just wasn’t a realistic option. Cambodia, however, is flat. Bicycle rentals are also seriously cheap (a high-end mountain bike will cost $5 or $6 per day, while entry level […]
Vietnam Airlines turned out to be nicer than any of the planes we generally board when we fly domestically and we had to laugh a little bit about the fact that 3rd world airlines are nicer than any run in the United States. We were fed a full meal on the 90 minute flight and before we […]