And thank Santa for that- I got it! First and foremost, MERRY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL. I hope you had/are having a smashing day. Mine was certainly a Christmas I will not forget in a hurry, I can tell ya!
But I’ll rewind a bit first to get you up to speed...
The first day of biking was quite a test of my pain threshold, as you may or may not be able to imagine. We had quite an easy going start, lulling us nicely into a highly false sense of security. After a bike fitting and a kick-off coconut together, we took a maiden voyage out around the Siem Reap area. Here´s a fun fact for you folks at home- Siem Reap is home to a substantial number of bumpy roads. And here´s another fun fact for you- mountain bike seats are very, very hard. Now put those two together and maybe you have an idea about the fun we had on our first day out and about. I felt a lot of the time like I was sitting on a rock which was breaking quite capably through the lovely padding in the bum area I´d so carefully crafted in Vietnam. Luckily for us, numbness kicks in quite quickly, so after about half an hour, I was more or less unable to feel anything below my tum for the rest of the day, which only poses a problem when you try and dismount like an elegant lady type person and not some kind of half human/half octopus. That first day, we visited a pagoda where some monks were busy monking around the place, and were told about the history of PEPY, the organisation who is behind all this madness. It is mighty interesting but I wont´t bore you with the details right now. Before leaving, we blessed by the big guy on campus (a 77 year old monk who has been a monk for 60 years. 60 actual full years!) and he seemed to get quite a bit of amusement out of the fact that we´re going everywhere by bike. Being laughed at by a monk can now be officially ticked off the list. The day ended with a trip to the Cambodian Circus which, thank Buddha, did not involve any clowns. Just a French Father Christmas.
Day two was, well, a bit on the painful side to start with. Turns out my rear end is quite sensitive, so it took a while to get used to, or rather go numb, to the pain. The day began with a Meg Skinner fave- a cooking class! Again, I will spare you the tasty details for fear of boring you stupid. But I can assure you, it was very delicious indeed. We overran slightly and so had a very quick zoom back to the hostel to grab some stuff and head out for a little 40km ride to a whopping great reservoir. The ride was realllllly fun and I felt all intrepid because there was some very light mountain biking terrain involved- all rocks and sand and mud and what not. Miraculously, I didn´t fall off. I did, however, manage to uproot quite a lot of plants on my way round, looking quite like a bushman when I finally emerged onto the main road. Again, we were late arriving back to town, so I had a whole 25 minutes to sort my life out before being picked up and taken to a Christmas Eve party. Evidently, I am able to get ready in a flash when I´m under a bit of time pressure and I was not the big sweaty mess I had expected to be, which was nice. Mainly for the people who encountered me that evening. It was a great party and I even managed to pass myself off as a Belgian to a Dutch guy (I choose to ignore the fact that he was quite merry on mulled wine at the time).
And so today, Christmas Day, we woke up at 3.45 to make our way to Angkor Wat at sunrise. As did every other tourist in Siem Reap, apparently- it was like Picadilly Circus down there. The sun did its thing and, following breakfast, we had a full day of touring part of the Angkor complex, which is nothing short of incredible. As usual, my brain has failed its purpose to retain knowledge and I can barely remember anything we were told, but I remember it being very fascinating. Lots of stuff about kings and dancers and angry Vietnamese people. We headed back around 3pm and are now about to go out for a Christmas dinner- that festive classic of scallops with chilli and lemongrass!
So here I bid you goodnight. We leave Siem Reap tomorrow and the real adventure begins- wish me luck!!
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