The morning started with the runs again. “Great, I am supposed to ride all the way to Vietnam today.” flashed through my head. The bike, however, seems to have a very good influence on the body in this respect and I had no problems the whole 601 km that I’ve ridden today. Yes, 601 kilometers! The record from Australia has been beaten and the 600 km mark broken! ;-)

From the above you might assume that I was riding the whole day and you would be right. In fact I had spent whole 10 hours in the saddle while I got off it only once to eat for about 20 minutes. The stock seat on my 2004 Kawa is very good though so the time spent on it was not a major problem.

I didn’t think it would be this far to the border with Vietnam and I am still not there! Well, I did reach the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. However, it was the wrong one. In my rush to Vietnam I forgot that there is only one border crossing open to international travelers and this was not the one. Changing one’s plans without much thinking may sometimes lead to such results unfortunately… “So that was why I originally planned to go through Pnom Penh!..” This kind of ill planning cost me over 100 km and lots of time that I spent searching for the turnoff to the wrong border. The people in the surrounding region seem to be completely dumb.

I was expecting similar road conditions going to the east of Siem Reap as there were when I was heading for it from the west. I am happy to report that the first about 30km are mostly sealed with only a few interruptions in some villages and around some bridges that they seemed to be working on. The next about 30 km offered many more of these “around a bridge” dirt interruptions, lowering the average speed on this stretch under what you would achieve on a pure dirt road. The dirt sections are up to few hundred meters long and at some places have only one lane for both directions of travel. After this all gets pretty nice with a paved road with almost no patches on it all the way to the border – I mean to the correct, international one. The dust that welcomed me into Cambodia is present at many places here too. I was able to “enjoy” some more dust on about 15 km dirt road leading to the first border I arrived to, passing many trucks in both directions. At the end of the day my shirt had changed its color at the front to match the color of the dust on the road. It was simply very dirty.

Looking for the “wrong” border crossing reminded me of another one of the many observations I made since I’ve started this trip: Most people in Malaysian and even more in Thailand and Cambodia can’t read maps. It usually takes a big effort for them to even find the place where they live on the map and knowing what is behind the hill at the end of their village is usually even bigger problem for them. These people don’t seem to travel much, even within their own country and school doesn’t seem to give them much in this respect either. I was quite surprised a few times.

What reminded me about this today was that most people I asked for the way to the border (while being only about 5 to 10 kilometers far from it as the crow flies) didn’t know. The other few mostly sent me in the wrong direction. Isn’t that amazing?

Another horror I had today was at a petrol station. They asked me what kind of petrol I wanted and I didn’t know as they had all the stands labeled in Cambodian only. It took me maybe 15 minutes (!) of pointing to a fairly new Toyota passenger car parked just a few meters from me making gestures for matching and equal signs, then even getting off my bike and playing whole little pantomimic plays for them and finally drawing pictures of different kinds of vehicles using different kinds of fuel before I could make their brains understand that my bike takes the same type of petrol as they would put into modern passenger cars. There were about 6 guys and not a single one of them was tuned up enough to understand. These people are sometimes very tough to get through to.

Here is another relating story from today that was repeated a few times: I would stop at the side of the road to ask a very simple question. All I say is “Vietnam”, point to the two possible directions to travel the road in and make a question / “I don’t know” gesture. Most people understand this as they pronounce the word “Vietnam” the same way and the kind of gesture I make would be quite clear almost anywhere in the world. Some people though, like the guys (5 of them this time) in this case  apparently lock themselves in a state where all they see is a foreigner who they could not possibly ever understand a word. In such cases they don’t even hear you say “Vietnam”. So these guys only pointed to a nearby restaurant that had 3 people sitting there. These guys were even worse. They didn’t react to me at all, only looking at the bike and pointing to my panniersand the additional fuel tanks. Not a single look crossed mine. Eye contact was simply impossible. I couldn’t help myself not to thank them in an ironic voice and left in laughing disbelief. :)

In the evening I arrived to Svay Rieng where I didn’t accept the first offer for accommodation for 6, subsequently discounted to 5 and 4 USD and found myself another guesthouse. This one was also for USD4 but with a yard to put my bike to. At the end they actually even locked it in the hall of the house just a couple of meters from my door. This was very convenient. The location of this guesthouse is N11 04.850 E105 49.279. They requested USD5 originally and weren’t too quick to discount to 4 but I stayed there on the street with them for quite a while until they offered a night for USD4.

(601km)