It was 8AM before I got down from my room. I asked the landlord what time Angor opened. I was informed that Angor opens at 5 o’clock in the morning. So I had already lost 3 hours and I still wasn’t there… So I decided to see Angor tomorrow as I wanted to spend only one day there and three hours were too precious to waist of that time, especially considering that most people seem to go there for 3 days since it is so big. I neither had the luxury to spend 3 days in Angor thanks to my Vietnamese visa that was about to expire soon and also the additional USD20 that I would have to pay have a bigger value than the number by itself in my current financial situation.

So I hopped on my bike and went to exchange some money and find something to eat. However, when I started to roam the city the road eventually took me towards the huge Lake Sap. My GPS was showing that I actually wasn’t all that far from it so I decided to have a look.

On the way I have passed some very basic fishing villages. The road changed from sealed to dirt and the last 4 kilometers before the lake were actually very muddy with deep wheel ruts created by cabinless lorries carrying tourists from the edge of the lake to a place where busses can safely go and where the tourists can be transferred to them.  So there I was, on my most hated surface of all again - mud. On the way there a couple of the small local motorcycles with narrow wheels carrying in one case 3 people overtook me. I had to laugh. Me – a guy on a 650 dual purpose bike – was being overtaken by these little small engine bikes with such a virtuosity. Well, my distrust to muddy surface survives in me after having the big fall in the Simpson Desert in Australia I guess. To my defense they are riding on this surface every day since they are about 8 years old so they do have bit more practice on it.

When I reached the lake there were some more bamboo and reed huts and many long pretty narrow wooden boats that are normally used for fishing but here probably almost as frequently for taking tourists out on the lake to see some of the floating villages that exist on the lake. Everything around was muddy, at places interweaved by smelly streaks of water full of fish offal or other smelly stuff.

I felt more confident on the mud on my way back as I found out it wasn’t as slippery as the other times I ran into mud. This time I actually kept pace with the local villager riding his little HONDA in front of me.

When I got back to the city it was afternoon already. After a while of roaming the streets I found the recommended exchange shop (coordinates are comming...), exchanged money and bought some food. As the hot meals on offer at the market seemed too expensive after Thailand (they were about USD1.50) I opted for some rolls and in a grocery shop (in fact they call them “Drink shop” here and there is not too big of a choice what you can buy; but apparently no supermarket-like shops exist here and this is the only option) I bought a box of spreadable cheese and a piece of hard cheese. It tasted absolutely great. Might it have been because I haven’t had any hard cheese since I left Australia..? :)

When I got back to my guesthouse I asked if they had a map of tje city and Angor. They had a brochure with lots of other textual information. So I went back to my room and studied it so that I knew where I was going to go tomorrow. It was this brochure from which I learned that I actually could buy a ticket for tomorrow already today and that it would entitle me to enter Angor after 4PM to see the sunset. That sounded good so I was at the ticket gate just before four. They informed me there that the time was actually changed already some time ago to 5PM and also that I could not enter with my motorbike as foreigners are prohibited from driving motor vehicles within Angor. That sounded like a pretty stupid rule so I enquired about it some more. The girl sent me to the adjacent tourist police station to request a special permission to drive. This was a waste of time as there seems to be no chance in the world that you would persuade these guys to issue something like that. They only informed me in the same lines the girl at the ticket booth did and that was it.

So I went back to the city and was now looking for a bicycle to rent since I could not imagine myself sitting on the uncomfortable little motorbike behind a local driver and not having the freedom I needed to be happy. And by bicycling I would actually do something for my body too. They rent bicycles in almost every guesthouse and mine was not an exception. However, after I tried the bike, which was the typical pushbike that you see most Cambodians to ride, I decided that I would very probably kill myself on it. It was very unstable. After that I knew that I was looking for a proper mountain bike to rent. After much asking I found one. It had both tyres flat though so no chance to ride it. That was it. I was out of time. I decided to ride my bike to the gate and then walk what looked like about 3km to the Angor Wat temple where I wanted to see the sunset.

When I got to the gate and saw the surprise on the girl's face (the girl I talked to before), I explained that I tried to find a pushbike I could safely ride and that I hadn’t found any. I also told her that I was going to leave my motorbike at the gate and walk to Angor temple. She could not believe it and at the end let me in on my motorbike, reminding me that it was not allowed and if the police caught me I would have to return. I happily agreed.

There are lots of police inside Angor but not a single one of them was concerned about me. On the contrary, when I stopped at Angor Wat a group of three policemen offered me to park the bike next to theirs.

As it didn’t look that the sunset was going to be too great I decided to see it from the temple on the top of the hill about 1km far. I climbed the hill and then the unbelievable steep steps to the top of the temple. These steps look more like a wall then a flight of stairs actually. I almost ran up the hill, leaving dozens of other tourists behind and yet I was still overtaken by couple of elephants going a different way (an elephant track) that started the same as me. I couldn’t believe it. Well, it was maybe a different couple of elephants that I saw on the top, I’m not entirely sure. But if they were the same elephants then the money spent for this elephant ride would seem to be spend maybe too quickly I’d think.

As expected before there was no sunset as clouds covered the sun. A little later a storm started to threaten. At least I had a nice talk to a guy from Melbourne who was a truck driver who lost his drivers license for 6 months so he rented his flat out and gave himself a holiday until he gets his license back. Good thinking.

(60km)