A ride in the country

As an impromptu idea, i thought i would go for a nice long bike ride on the Saturday morning then catch a bus up to Phnom Penh to meet some friends. There is this nice resevoir i calculated to be about an hour bike ride south of Kampong Speu with some flooded trees and things in it which looked nice when we drove past.

So my alarm went off at 6am and predictably my good intentions went out the window and snoozed to a much more civilised nine am. The ride down was quite nice, it threatened to rain but held off.

This is the public park area that Kampong Speu town has, between my house and market. As you can see its not really much use as its almost always flooded!

It was really great to be able to stop and have a look at all the things i drive past but never get to stop to see.
However the road i go down is National Road 4 connecting to Sihanoukville port which means the road is chockers with trucks and buses make it a bit unsafe.
There are also random road signs which makes things interesting.

I think my bike isnt really big enough for me so i was having some real issues when i arrived at the place after 1.5 hours riding.

The area is full of quarries taking down whole mountains. My colleaugue noted that its lucky I came now because in a few years Cambodia won't have any! This particular company is the "Taiwan Kamhwa Crushing Company".

Then i decided quite unwisely to not stop for a rest as time was getting on. The wind picked up and was blowing a gale against me and i stupidly spent all my energy racing this school kid who was going past me. So in the end it took me about 3.5 hours to get back on a very empty tank. I limped into Kampong Speu town and ordered a big 'bai cha' (fried rice).

Maybe long bike rides aren't really my thing!

Anway i went home had a quick shower, hopped in a van with 25 others and soon enough was sipping wine on the mighty mighty mekong!