Dust, sweat and Phnom Penh
N 11°35'03.4'' E 104°55'52.1''
Date:
30.05.2017
Day: 700
Country:
Cambodia
Location:
Phnom Penh
Latitude N:
11°34’03.4”
Longitude E:
104°55’52.1”
Daily kilometers:
77 km
Total kilometers:
23,897 km
As the crow flies:
66 km
Average speed:
22.4 km/h
Maximum speed:
27.3 km/h
Travel time:
3:23 hrs.
Soil condition:
Asphalt/gravel/construction sites
Maximum height:
20 m
Total altitude meters:
71.177 m
Altitude meters for the day:
70 m
Sunrise:
05:35 h
Sunset:
6:20 pm
Temperature day max:
35°C
Departure:
06:30 a.m.
Arrival time:
11:30 a.m.
(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).
06:30 and already 30 degrees. We pedal our steeds along the NR 6 towards the capital Phnom Penh. The mercury rises to 35 °C as early as 9:00 am. in the shade. Nothing new, but still really hot. As soon as we stop to take a photo or buy a bottle of water from a street stall, we immediately start sweating profusely. We quickly jump back into the saddle, because the only thing that keeps us cool is the wind. Sections of the road are under construction. There is endless dust. The politicians’ speeches are still blaring out of the many loudspeakers and are really driving us crazy. Convoys of cars speed past us. People dance to extremely loud music on the loading areas of the vans. They are all dressed in white and appear to be supporters of one of the few Cambodian parties. Another election rally comes towards us in trucks, cars, rickshaws and mopeds. There is singing, shouting and roaring. The people on the roadside are literally infected by the tumult and joy and start dancing spontaneously despite the monkey heat. Even children laugh boisterously and sway their hips to the amusement of their parents. Then the convoy roared past. The only thing left in the air is the dust whirled up by the many wheels. A hot breeze drives the wall of dust over the wooden huts and simple stone houses that are brooding in the heat. The sweat burns our eyes, mixes with the dirt sticking to our faces, flows in rivulets down our necks, across our throats, down our backs towards our hips and collects at the waistband of our pants. Our legs pedal up and down incessantly, the black chain rattles and the Bosch motor whirs. “Pothole!” a warning cry leaves my mouth. Wuuummm!, the front tire hammers in because I can’t swerve in time. Wuuummm!, the disappearing rear tire lifts me out of the saddle. Duuummm! Dummm!, the trailer tires crash through the gluttonous recess. In the rear-view mirror, I can see Tanja just managing to avoid the nasty axle breaker in the dirty asphalt. “Puhhh,” I groan as we whizz through the obstacle unscathed and hopefully without any technical consequences. On we go, further and further into the 1.5 million metropolis of Phnom Penh. Tuuuhhht! Tuuuhhht! Tuuuhhht!, large, rusty trucks, with their poorly secured loads as high as houses, sound their terrible horns. Their monster tires smack close to us over the asphalt, which is boiling in the midday heat. We feel the additional heat wave from the hot engines. In between, in front of and behind them, hundreds of mopeds and motorized rickshaws rattle around like biting wasps. They sound their trumpets to draw attention to themselves, but also to ruthlessly push their way in or push them aside. An insane symbiosis of incredible hectic, stress and bustle. From now on, we are forced to focus all our energies, to concentrate in the highest form in order to survive in the unpredictable anthill of human individuals without colliding with any of them. As is so often the case when driving in and out of big cities, we completely surrender to the flow of events and flow with the coughing and roaring Blechanakonda through the unpredictable jungle of an Asian capital.
“The royal palace!” I shout, pointing to the left at the beautiful, lofty buildings that stretch their golden roofs into the sky. We stop in front of the well-tended, lush green lawn and put our bikes on the stand. While Tanja gives Ajaci water, I take a few pictures of the bizarre scene. Because of the extremely high humidity and the nasty heat of 35 degrees in the shade, sweat is constantly pouring into my eyes and I have difficulty focusing the picture. Click, click, click, sounds the camera, while the traffic whizzes past me incessantly. After almost 80 kilometers of cycling and entering the city, even holding my camera is an effort. “Let’s find the hotel,” I ask Tanja to load Ajaci back into his trailer. He doesn’t need to be told twice and jumps like lightning into his beloved trailer, which provides him with plenty of shade and a cooling breeze as I pedal my bike train along. You have to be a dog, it goes through my head. Then, after some back and forth, we are standing in front of the small hotel directly on the banks of the Tonle Sap. The Frenchman Phillipe, who has just leased the hotel from a Cambodian woman, gives us a friendly welcome. As the narrow, three-storey house with a total of five rooms has no storage space, we have to lug our trailers up to the third floor and store them in our room after an extremely strenuous day. “The penthouse has a lot of space and because we are Phillipe’s first guests and want to stay for a week, we get an absolutely special price of US$45 per day. Way above our budget, but acceptable as we are in the hot spot of a big city. “Wow!”, I exclaim as I carry the first trailer into our accommodation with Phillipe, exhausted from the effort. Two very large rooms, one with a view of the river and one facing the quiet east side, welcome us. There is a bathroom and a toilet. The length from one end of the room to the other is a whopping 30 meters. On the river side, there is another 25 square meter terrace with an unobstructed view of the Tonle Sap, which flows into the Mekong not far from here, and the barges, excursion steamers and fishing boats gliding along. “A bit oversized,” I say to Tanja. “That’s true. You can go jogging there without any problems,” she replies with a laugh. However. In the last two years, apart from the few nights in a tent, we have spent the night in many small run-down holes. A real reason to enjoy this palace to the full during our time in the country’s most important economic center…
If you would like to find out more about our adventures, you can find our books under this link.
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