Abundance of Asian activity and Ajaci’s experiences with lotus flowers
N 10°59'52.4'' E 104°44'54.0''
Date:
29.05.2017
Day: 699
Country:
Cambodia
Province
Takeo
Location:
Takeo
Latitude N:
10°59’52.4”
Longitude E:
104°44’54.0”
Daily kilometers:
103 km
Total kilometers:
23,820 km
As the crow flies:
76 km
Average speed:
24 km/h
Maximum speed:
28.6 km/h
Travel time:
4:17 hrs.
Soil condition:
Asphalt
Maximum height:
45 m
Total altitude meters:
71.107 m
Altitude meters for the day:
89 m
Sunrise:
05:37 pm
Sunset:
6:19 pm
Temperature day max:
32°C
Departure:
07:30 a.m.
Arrival time:
2:00 pm
(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).
After almost a month in Kep, we load up our bikes. The sky is cloudy and it is raining. We leave this pleasant place, a friendly little hotel where we were always treated courteously. In the rear-view mirror, the beach at Kep gets smaller and smaller. The coastal road winds along the Gulf of Thailand for a few more kilometers until it suddenly pulls away from the sea. The temperature is pleasant for the first half hour. As the sun peeps through the clouds, it gets hot, as it soon does every day, and therefore terribly humid. Again and again, some temples stretch their golden roofs into the sky. As there are so many of them here, we rarely stop to take a photo. A young novice sits alone on the railing and watches us warily. We give him a friendly wave and he shyly raises his hand. Then we cycle through a few small towns. A tremendous noise hammers out at us from loudspeakers suspended in the trees, attached to long poles or installed on the roofs of houses. In a few days, elections will be held, or at least the population will be led to believe that they can change something in this extremely corrupt country with their vote. Various politicians give speeches that blare down on the people at a deafening volume. One might think that the louder the more insistent, or the louder the more credible, is the endless drivel and the bent truth of a corrupt and venal government. With ears ringing, we reach the lively, hectic and colorful markets in the center of the human settlements. There is an endless amount of garbage on some streets. Everything, but absolutely everything, is simply carelessly thrown away and flattened by the tires of trucks, buses, vans, rickshaws, mopeds and bicycles. Where the black rubber doesn’t reach, what hasn’t yet bonded one hundred percent with the earth or the coarse, pitted asphalt is smeared by the shoeless feet of the numerous children and the worn-out rubber slippers of the adults. Decaying smells of plants, fruit and meat combine with the scents of flowers, incense sticks and fresh vegetables. We are literally sucked in by the hustle and bustle, the abundance, the Asian hustle and bustle, the anthill of people. I should actually stop to capture the madness of movement and bustle, the explosion of colors, the mingling of dirt, beauty, whimsicalities and idiosyncrasies, but I only want one thing, and that’s to get out of here.
Then suddenly we are spat out again and end up in silence. Rice fields glide past us. Ox carts come towards us. Cows stand at the edge of the field and eat what they can get. Despite the incessant feeding efforts, one or two cattle look as if they will soon starve to death. For refreshment, we eat a hot corn on the cob, which we buy from a farmer’s wife on the roadside. “Hello! Hello! Hello!”, bright, innocent children’s voices ring out incessantly. We raise our hands and wave back. Mango trees, their branches bending under the weight of the ripe fruit, are harvested. The women hold up a long pole with a kind of basket attached to it. They use them to fish the queen of fruits out of the branches and bring them to the ground without bruising them.
Again and again we are overtaken by heavily laden cargo mopeds and cargo rickshaws. Your load would bring a van to its knees here in Europe. We stop at a roadside restaurant to get a little rest from the abnormal heat and humidity. Although the word restaurant is a massive exaggeration for such a half-ruined, makeshift bamboo hut. To give our depleted energy reserves a boost, we drink an iced Coke. Strangely enough, the sweet swill is lukewarm. Either the owner of the street stall has just put them in the crate filled with ice cubes, or the ice just can’t do its job in the monkey heat. Anyway, we drink a can each while Ajaci nervously paces up and down. “What’s going on? Give me a break,” I admonish him. “I think he needs a pee,” says Tanja, whereupon I groan and get up to walk a few meters away from the food stand with him. In front of us is a lotus flower pond. The water is brackish, or at least has an unpleasant odor. Ajaci mistakes the treacherous greenery bobbing on the stinking water and the beautiful flowers for a meadow and jumps in. “Ajaci! Are you crazy?” I grumble as he sinks up to his neck in the cesspit and tries to escape it with panicked hopping movements. A short time later he is standing next to the pond, filthy and smelly, stumbling along the bank and comes running up wagging his tail. “Oh dear. You look awful. And how you stink. No guest house will take us,” I lament.
Back at the food stall, I try to brush the worst of the dirt out of his coat. “And what do we do with the smell now?” I ask Tanja, who once again finds the situation extremely funny. Just a few kilometers further on, I can see in the corner of my eye a gas station attendant holding a hose and cleaning the ground with a jet of water. I immediately apply the brakes. The man sees me and the dog, knows immediately what I want and hands me the hose. 10 minutes later, Ajaci is white again and reasonably odorless.
In the early afternoon we find a simple motel in a village. We are grateful when the owner allows us to roll our bikes and trailer into the large room. So on this day we are presented with one of the easiest checks in the last two years…
If you would like to find out more about our adventures, you can find our books under this link.
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