Day 1: Siem Reap to Koh Ker
The first day of my 4-day dirtbiking trip we rode about 160 km, from Siem Reap to Koh Ker, stopping at a bunch of great deserted temples. A few times today we did some stretches of really fun singletrack that I loved, and no big wipeouts!
Sophal picked me up bright and early at my guesthouse, we stopped by the bank so I could get some cash to pay for the trip, then we went to Hidden Cambodia’s office to get geared up. Paul the company tour director asked me to do a few laps around the house to get warmed up and make sure I still knew how to ride, and I was determined to show him how quickly I had learned; unfortunately before I even made it around the house once I hit some soft sand/dirt on one corner, the front tire slid out and I had to drop the bike.
I heaved it back up and tried to get going before anyone could notice but they obviously heard the engine stall and came running up to see what happened… doh, busted! I showed them the sand, then got back on and did some real laps around the house.
A bit more prep, and we were ready to go. Paul told me to be careful and pointed out a few expensive parts on the bike that I didn’t want to have to replace; I wasn’t sure if he did that because he wanted it to be clear that I would be liable for damage to the bike, or if he thought I would be more careful if I was worried about expensive bike repairs, but I was much more concerned about my own welfare than some stupid bike!
First we rode to a 9th century Hindu temple called Chay Soeivibol (note: I am not sure about the spellings about some of these places; at the end of each day I would bug Lis to tell me the names and spellings of each place but I’m not sure I got them all right, and many don’t show up in Google.)
Once again I was glad to have the place to myself — the day before, I made the mistake of going to Ta Phrom (one of the more popular temples at Angkor, famous for its appearance in the movie Tomb Raider) at the wrong time of day and was infuriated by the endless stream of tour groups getting in the way of my pictures. Once when I was trying to get a picture of a huge silk cotton tree I waited over 5 minutes for a break in the tourist conga line before giving up and moving on. Here, as with many of the temples I visited on my dirtbiking trip, I literally had the place to myself — not a single other visitor while I was there. Excellent!
We hit the road again, and they took me on a really fun singletrack trail, fairly easy stuff but much more exciting and fun than the dirt roads we had been on so far. Lots of curves, dips, bumps and occasional patches of sand. I had a great time learning how to steer with my hips, and gradually gained a bit of confidence in my riding ability. It reminded me a lot of mountain biking (maybe comparable to an easy green trail at Whistler); just as I had hoped, it seems that a lot of the skills are transferable: picking a good line, absorbing bumps with your legs, keeping your body centered and letting the bike float around underneath you. I tried to keep reminding myself I wasn’t really mountain biking and that the bike I was on would hurt a lot more if it landed on top of me.
Just as I started to get a bit tired and hungry we stopped for some sugar cane juice at a roadside cart that squishes the juice out of big pieces of sugar cane. It looked really easy to lose a finger or hand in that thing — glad I wasn’t the one operating it.
While we were there I went over to a truck nearby that had a bunch of people in the back including a kid that had been smiling and waving at me. When I took a picture of him and showed it to his mom on my camera’s LCD screen, she gasped in amazement — one of the first of many people I met on this trip to have that reaction. I guess it was the first time she had seen her boy on a screen like that, possibly the first time she had seen a picture of him at all.
We rode a bit further before stopping for lunch at the same place we ate the other day, outside Beng Mealea. I wandered around for a few minutes afterwards looking for good photo ops but didn’t find many, just these girls tossing rice around to separate it from the chaff.
Next we stopped just a few km away to see where sandstone blocks that were used to build temples were cut out of the riverbed. The cuts in the rock visible here were made almost 1000 years ago:
We stopped for gas at a stand with a bunch of pre-filled bottles, which is the most common type of gas station I saw in Cambodia and Vietnam. Much of the time the bottles were old Coke or whiskey bottles. Some of the station attendants I saw were about 6-8 years old.
Then we headed up a mountain to Patang Kumnou, the site of some 10th(?) century Hindu rock carvings, most with their original coloring. The path up there was some really fun bumpy singletrack, the most fun I had had riding yet.
While we were there we heard a loud boom in the distance, and Lis said “land mine.” I said “from an animal, probably?”, he said “probably.” “Hopefully.” “Yeah, hopefully.”
We rode for another hour or so, checked in to our guesthouse and relaxed for a while. I had only slept about 4 hours last night (too excited about the trip), so I had a much-needed power nap.
After our siesta we rode to Koh Ker, a 10th century Angkorian capital with dozens of major temples and as many as 100 smaller religious buildings. This area seems ready to boom in the next few years as roads continue to improve and more minefields are cleared. We stopped at a few of the major temples before stopping at the town of Kulen.
In Kulen I took some pictures of the villagers; one lady tried to get her kids to pose but they were afraid of me and hid behind her instead. The girl eventually overcame her shyness. Cambodian kids are gorgeous, especially the girls… I wish I had taken more pictures of kids there.
I hung out with this one family for a while alternately taking pictures and showing them the results on the LCD screen; for some reason their reaction was to burst out laughing each time, whether the pictures were good or bad.
We continued on to Prasat Thom, the principal monument at Koh Ker, a 7-level sandstone pyramid, 40m high. Lis showed me around a bit, then went to watch the bikes while I went to the top of the pyramid to watch the sunset.
While I was waiting for the sun to set I used my backpack as a tripod to take some glamour shots of myself at the top of the temple next to the Cambodian flag, acting like I conquered the place or something (yeah, I totally climbed those stairs!!)
Unfortunately a few seconds into the photo shoot it started raining. I stuck around for a while hoping it would pass quickly because stormy weather often makes for good pictures, but I heard some thunder and decided that since I was likely the tallest thing within 100 sq km it would probably be wise to give up on the sunset. Also, I didn’t know how happy Lis would be about riding back to the guesthouse in the rain. (it ended up pouring on us all the way back, and he didn’t seem to mind.) So I snapped a few more self-photos and headed down.
By the way, my Lonely Planet Cambodia says “This striking structure offers some spectacular views across the forest from its summit”, and I’m sorry, but flat tree-covered terrain is not what I would call spectacular. Nice, maybe. LP seems to do that a lot.
Our guesthouse was about 10 km away on easy dirt roads, and I have to say riding in rain is not very fun — raindrops on your face at 60 kph are kind of painful. We were completely soaked when we got back. I think this was the first (maybe only) time I felt a bit chilly during my month in Cambodia.
I had a quick shower, which consisted of dumping small buckets of water over my head from a reservoir next to the toilet (which is also used to flush); I have a photo of one of these later in the trip.
We went out for a dinner of fried chicken and rice, then for a quick walk around town before returning to the guesthouse around 8pm. I wrote in my journal, read about temples for a while, and finally crashed around 10, exhausted.
See more photos of dirtbiking in Cambodia, or a chronological view of photos from today.