Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

 Well we finally arrived at Siem Reap Cambodia around 10.30pm last night.  We were picked up by the hotel and taken to the Ankor Hotel which is really flash.  I have a huge room and the pool is marvellous.

So after booking into the hotel, feeling dusty and dirty, we decided to start putting our bikes together.  By 11.45pm my bike was together.  I went over to Len's room and his room was in a mess.  I left him to himself and I headed back to my room for a nice shower and get ready for tomorrow.  I was so looking forward to getting on the bike and having a ride.

With a nice breakfast we were on the road by 9.30 to head out to the world famous Angkor Wat.  Now this has been shown on Lonely Planet, Getaway, discovery channel and National Geographic.  Now it's been tainted by the Aussie and the Yank.  We had a great time and have only seen half the place.

We're going back tomorrow for 1/2 a day and this will give us time to have a look at the city before we start our first real day of cycling on this tour.

The photos are all inside Angkor Wat or Angkor thom.  Both incredible historical sites of Cambodia which date back to the 11th Century AD.

 the ride out to Angkor Wat was quite pleasant.  Len bought me this mirror that clicks onto my sunglasses.  He reckons I need this to save my ass from the mad drivers.

If you want to visit this place make sure you take plenty of water and a hat, because it gets really hot.  Actually it's unbearable at times.  There's plenty of children selling bottles of water for 1 US and T-shirts for 2 US.  I don't need anymore rubbish to put in my pannier bangs.

Today we rode about 20ks and tomorrow will be close to the same.  It's good get these old tired legs going again.  I intend to inflict pain into Len as soon as we hit the highway for the long slog to the Thailand border.

More historical sites tomorrow and a swim.  Life's a bitch isn't it.

The Aussie and the Yank walking the back alleys of Chinatown.

 

After a good night's sleep of about 8 hours, it was up for breakfast at 8am.  Now if this was the African tour I would have been up and packed up my tent and having breakfast by 6am.  Bullshit, not in Manila.  I have a huge bed, cable TV, Wifi, and a shower.  Now this is a different tour.  

The first thing we did was head to the Thai Embassy to get a 30day visa.  After waiting in line and working out they wanted over 75 dollars, we decided to change our plan of attack.  We thought that if we enter Thailand we could ride for 14 days and enter Laos at Vietienne.  We want to ride at least a week in Laos before re-entering Thailand and heading back to Siem Reap Cambodia for our return to Manila.

After the embassy we went to Chinatown to have a look around.  This is your typical Asian market, selling everything from poulty, fish, vegetables, flowers, machines, music, and plenty of child beggars.  Although I'm not in the habit of taking photos of beggars, I had my camera out and was clicking everything to try and get that good shot.  This young girl just happen to be caught in the moment.

Before you can go on any good ride you must stock up on some good drugs.  Every cyclist knows that talent alone won't get you across the line without some kind of drugs.  I bought the legal ones.  Not sure what Len bought, but damn he's bags are going to be really heavy this tour.

Whilst walking up and down every street in Chinatown we came across these small waterways.  What you can see is a river system clogged with litter.  Even a dog floating in the mess.  

 

I always like to take photos of faces in the crowd, they seem to tell a story.  This one's obvious.

The Chinatown region is really worth the effort.  We walked around for hours admiring the shops and the people.  We had nice weather, not like back home where it's raining. 

We headed over to the Mall of Asia which is like Pacific Fair in Surfers Paradise.  Plenty of up market shops and people all dressed immaculately.  They even had a full size ice hockey rink in the centre.  I did want to hang around and go to the movies as nothing really got my eye. 

Tonight we're going to another large mall to visit the gun shop.  Might need some protection for the next part of our journey.

Safe riding,

Manila, Philipines.

I had really good flight and it went so quickly.  About 800kph actually.

The checking through customs and immigration took about 15minutes and soon I was outside checking out for person carrying the sign with my name.  I like it when it says 'Terence'.  Only my mother calls me that.

After dragging the bike box and loading it into the van we drove down to the area where all the visitors are waiting for the new arrivals.  I saw Len as we drove in.  I got out of the van and put the camera on as I walked up to him.  He had no idea I was there.  I got some really good film of our meeting. 

I hadn't seen Len in well over a year and he looks in good shape.  Must be all that riding.

We went for a walk down the the Amazonia Hotel for drink and chill out for an hour.  By 10pm I was stuffed.  We went back to the hotel La Cornia and crashed.  I had a terrible sleep and was up really early.

Today we spent down at the Fort Santiago.  It's one of the oldest Hispanic stone fortresses in the country.  Fort Santiago is located in the northern part of the Walled City.  In pre colonial times this was the site of Rajah Soliman's "kuta" or fort.  The Spaniards under the term of Governor General Gomez Perez Dasmarinas fortified what was originally stone structures.

Other governors general continued to modernize Fort Santiago's defenses.  Which makes it probably the best laid ou portion of the walls.

Now I'm not in history, but I took the brochure and typed out the info for you.

Just some monuments I found at Fort Santiago.

Roxas facing the firing squad.

This is Len my cycling buddy. 

We walked alot today and took it pretty easy.  Tonight we're going to check out the Mall of Asia.

24 hours till lift off.

Well it's 1 day before I head off to meet up with my cycling buddy Len DeMoss in the Philippines.  We'll be catching the plane to Cambodia on the 5 March and arriving back in Manilla on the 22 April 2013.

Recently I had my bike overhauled with new XT Shimano brakes.  The AVIDS I had on were terrible.  Riding in extreme heat would cause the brake fluid to expand and my brakes would come on making riding impossible.  I was advised by a good friend Luke Dale that this was common with this brand of brakes.

The new brakes are fantastic and I have to thank Spearman Cycles of Wollongong who did the work in such short time.  You will see from my earlier trip that Spearman Cycles is a proud supporter of Vision Impaired cyclists of the Illawarra and eXsight Tandems.

If you ever need professional service when buying a bike or repairing your old rust bucket, go and see David or Ryan.  But don't tell them I sent you.

Don't forget to hit the paypal button and make a small donation to eXsight Tandems.  Keeping the tandems on the road costs money, our total insurance for all tandems is close to $1500.

Last day of riding with eXsight Tandems for a couple of months.

This is Ralph, one of the Captains.

Today we rode from Sutherland to Wollongong with eXsight Tandems.  We had about 6 tandems out on the road and a member riding her own bike.  We had a great ride stopping at the famous Bald Hill.  This is one of my major training areas.  We ride up this mountain each week and then ride back into Wollongong.

Having a stop looking down to Wollongong on the south coast of New South Wales.

So, after a nice hard ride we ended up at Ruby's coffee shop where many stories were told as to who was the best tandem riders on the day.  I think I came last, but I blame the lazy bloke on the back for that.  

Another week of training and I'm off.

Work is over and it's time to go for a ride.

Well, my last day of work is Friday 22 February 2013 and it's time to get my act together for the next bicycle journey.

The next port of call will be Manila, Philippines.  I'll be meeting up with one of my good friends from the Cairo to Capetown 2011 cycle tour, Mr Len DeMoss.  Len and Colin started their tour on the 10 Jan this year and have ridden all over the Philippines, dodging trucks, buses, motorbikes, trikes and dogs.

After harassing Len with far too many emails we've decided to change our route and head for Cambodia.

We'll spend a couple of days in Manila and then catch a flight to Siem Reap and start our holiday.  Yeh, riding a bike and cooking your ass is a holiday to me.   The weather should be warm and humid, but at least we'll have a safer ride.

We intend to head up north and enter Thailand and then hopefully into Laos.  We should reach northern Thailand and then start the slow ride back to Cambodia for the flight back to Manila.  We'll have 2 months this trip, and we should have a blast.

The new bike is ready, my legs are ready.  So follow my story as one Aussie and a yank go on tour.

Time to go back to 2004. So what did happen to the keys.

When Josh and I were riding through Africa we had some great times and some very challenging times.  One afternoon in Malawi it was getting really late as we headed south to Llongwe.  It was getting very late, the sun had gone down and we seriously needed to get off the road or we'd be road kill.  We followed the power lines and eventually landed in this small town and the Ayuda Luxury Motel.  This is what you call a brick shithouse. We were really starving and needed to get some food into us as we still had another 165ks to go the following day.  We went to the restuarant and asked for chicken, NO, then we asked for potato, NO, all they had were 2 eggs. 

We walked up into town and bought some beautiful hot chips and sat on some bags and watched the boys kicking the ball around. When we got back to the shithouse, the music was full blast and the place was full of locals drunk as skunks.  For the next 4 hours we tried to sleep with the music hitting 300000000 decibells.  Time to go out and tell the barman to turn the music off.  Not a good idea.  The barman told us that since the locals were buying drinks and making him money the beer will continue to flow and the music stays on.  Eventually we fell to sleep at about 2am.  Then all hell breaks loose.  This dickhead in his truck decides to turn his diesel truck on and warm it up for 1 hours before leaving for the days work.  We had no sleep and had a long way to go before we finally got our rest day.

So the photo below is Josh leaving the Ayuda Luxury Motel in a rush.  I asked Josh why the rush, slow down, I'm old, relax we're on holidays. Josh told me that because the barman was an absolute asshole he decided to get the key to our room and slide it back under the door.  Now that's going to take sometime to get out.  They only had one key.  Also we inherited another mosquito net after having one stolen earlier on in the holiday. 

Later that year Josh went on to win the Australia Road Titles in Queensland.  The photo below is Josh crossing the line well ahead of the chasing bunch.

One of the major sponsors of eXsight Tandems have moved.  We will officially re-open at 301 Keira Street Wollongong on Thursday 9th August at 8:30am and trade until 9pm.

Our new trading hours will be:
8:30am – 6:00pm Mon – Fri
8:30am – 9:00pm Thursday
8:30am – 4:00pm Saturday
10:00am – 4:00pm Sunday

See you at the new store!!

Support the company that supports visually impaired cyclist.  Check out their website for great bargains.