**Please don't be confused! We did indeed move to Bhutan in May and we are currently traveling in Nepal. Nonetheless, we still have the goal of documenting the final months of our bicycle trip around SE Asia. So please enjoy this latest blog entry, a mere half of a year after the fact! :) PS--If you are reading this in an automated email, don't forget to check our actual website for lots of photos and video!**
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On the first day of 2016, we left the beach bum's paradise of Koh Ta Kiev and cycled from Otres Beach to Sihanoukville. Failing to find anything charming about the place on first impression, we opted for a quick lunch and grocery shop, before continuing on. In an effort to stay off of the main roads, Matt plotted out one of his famous short cuts that turn out to be long cuts. The road turned to dirt and passed by farmland and the occasional homestead. It wasn't long before it narrowed to a sandy track crowded with dry grasses taller than us. We felt like we were riding though the savannah of Africa minus any exciting megafauna. We wouldn't have minded pushing our overloaded bikes through sand pits, or unloading and hauling our them across deep canyons of erosion, if it were not for the knowledge that a perfectly rideable road paralleled this one just a few kilometers away. It's a lot easier to be enthusiastic about such challenges when you know there are not more logical options to get to where you want to go.

With our slow progress along the African detour, we didn't make it to Chi Phat that day, but instead overnighted in an interesting riverside town at a humble guesthouse run by a really friendly family. They were genuinely excited to have us stay there. The next day we made it up the dirt road to Chi Phat faster than we anticipated. The final step in reaching the rural village was a pedestrian and bike ferry across a mellow stretch of river, the ferry being nothing more than a floating wooden platform with a motor attached. While Chi Phat may be out of the way, it's not exactly off the beaten path of tourism, but in a good way. It is widely regarded as the most successful example of Cambodia's Community-Based Ecotourism initiative. Our first stop was the official visitor center where we arranged a homestay that was really just a small guesthouse with a Khmer customer base. Nonetheless, the owner was lovely and she had her son guide us to a great swimming hole along the river after we briefly settled in.

We spent the next couple of days hanging around the village and doing some work on the computer at the visitor center, including applications for a sea kayaking instructor position in Malaysia (which obviously we didn't get). By then, we had decided which of the many tempting options of eco-adventures we wanted to do for a surprisingly affordable price. While we normally don't do tours and prefer to explore on our own, we wanted to support the basis of the eco-tourism program that gives locals an alternative livelihood to the previously rampant illegal poaching and tree harvesting in the area. Some people claim that 95% of the community now abstains from these destructive practices because they have seen the benefits of eco-tourism. While it seems most tourists opt for multi-day guided treks in the surrounding foothills of the Cardamom Mountains, we signed up for a mountain bike day trip. Apparently we don't spend enough time riding bikes already. 

After a bit of disorganization when we showed up early the next morning--it wouldn't be Cambodia otherwise--we tested the mountain bikes and determined they were functional...enough. After pushing our bikes through a shallow spot in the river, we rode some fun single track through meadows and forest to an archeological site. We hiked up to the base of some cliffs and then climbed some makeshift ladders to peer at a row of ancient burial jars tucked away on a protected ledge. They are believed to be around 500 years old and possibly from a culture that was at odds with the Angkorian empire and retreated into the Cardamom Mountains to avoid persecution. ​

Next, our guide led us to a beautiful arc of waterfalls dropping in to a wide pool. Swimming behind the falls was the perfect way to cool down in the midday heat. The last stop was a bat cave devoid of roosting bats. While our guide didn't speak much English, he indicated that the bats were out flying around and would come back at night. I pondered the biological possibilities of diurnal bats until we returned to the visitor center. There we learned that the bats do not frequent that cave during the dry season and our guide should have taken us somewhere else. Having seen a few caves with bats before, we weren't heartbroken over the oversight and thought it was a worthwhile day overall. 

Backtracking to the main highway from Chi Phat, we began crossing the Koh Kong Conservation Corridor, tackling our first significant elevation change in Cambodia except for our sidetrip to the top of Bokor Mountain. After miles of uninterrupted jungle, we stopped in the only town of significance with the remnants of a defunct Community-Based Ecotourism program. The homestay program was still available, but without anything else drawing tourists to the town, I joked that the only people using it would be bicycle travelers. Turns out that is pretty accurate! After a nice but uneventful stay with a family growing a “mixed fruit” orchard, we crossed paths with two separate cyclists the following day counting on that town as a stopover. Later, we watched a video made by the German couple we had met at Monkey Maya and they had footage of staying at the same exact house we did!

We rolled with the hills until we reached the city of Koh Kong along the border of Thailand. It was strange to think that we had been just on the other side of that border one year ago, but decided not to continue in to Cambodia. Now here we were. We had come so far only to end up so close to where we had been. Perhaps even more ironic was settling in to Koh Kong for a few days of planning a return to Thailand in a month or so, this time meeting up with Matt’s parents in Bangkok and together hitting spots around the country that we missed before.

Leaving Koh Kong, we turned north and began heading in to the heart of the Cardamom range. While we had been skirting its fringes since Chi Phat, the route we were undertaking in that moment had been on our minds since we first looked closely at a map of Cambodia in Phnom Penh several months earlier. At that time, it was the still rainy season and it was not recommended to take the unpaved roads that turn to mud pits during daily deluges. But one occasional benefit of traveling as excruciatingly slowly as we do is that entire seasons go by before we've reached the other side of our map. Lonely Planet had deemed the roads through "the second-largest virgin rainforest on mainland southeast Asia" as "passable by Toyota Camry in the dry season", so we stocked up on food and decided to give it a go. Besides being the only option to avoid backtracking to Siem Reap, we were curious to see what we could of the area's "breathtaking beauty and astonishing biodiversity" from the seat of a bicycle. Knowing it was a sparsely populated region despite the new roads being blasted through it by Chinese hydropower companies, we were looking forward to actually doing some wild camping. At the same time, we had seen enough of Southeast Asia to know that wherever there are roads, there are people. 

The first day had both perfectly paved roads (the ones that led to a massive dam) and rough dirt tracks (the ones that did not lead to a dam). After a particularly rough incline on loose gravel where my bike slipped out from underneath me a couple of times, we called it a day at the top of the hill. We made camp underneath a tremendous power line tower, the counterpart to all of the hydro-development in the theoretically protected mountains. While we ultimately enjoyed camping in the peace and quiet...er...peace and buzzing of electricity overhead, we were first swarmed by bees, then the mosquitos came out in force while cooking and eating a pasta dinner. We retreated in to our tent as quickly as possible, despite not successfully airing out its putrid stench from not one, but two, unpleasant discoveries. When Matt set up the tent, first he found a rotting gooey dead scorpion in it, followed by a little desiccated gecko. Apparently we had carried them with us from the beach on Koh Ta Kiev. Poor guys, but man did those little things stink! Oh, and both of our air mattresses had developed valve leaks and deflated within minutes. Ah, the joys of camping!

The next day was a long one for only covering 37 miles. Steep hills made slow going on the up and down, and we made lots of breaks for photos, snacks, and filtering water whenever we found a source. One time we opted for a clear, flowing drainage ditch on the side of the traffic-free road only to observe a dude on his motorbike pull over to pee into it a few minutes after we finished purifying our supply. I suppose it was good timing, but who's to say there wasn't a different dude peeing into the ditch a few minutes before we arrived? 

Approaching the village of Osam in the dusk, we descended out of the forest and were completely distracted by the burnt skeletons of old growth trees towering above young banana plantations. New settlements lined the road. It appeared that the forest had been recently cleared to make way for agriculture, as frequently happens even in (theoretically) protected areas, but we could not fathom intentionally burning those massive trees. It was rural sprawl in the virgin land of opportunity, at the expense of the Cardamom's off-the-charts biodiversity. But what alternatives do poor Cambodians saddled with an ineffective and corrupt government realistically have? The motivation to stake your small claim only increases in the face of wholesale "leases" of national parks to resort developers and resource extraction corporations.

We reached Osam well after dark and locals kindly pointed us in the direction of a surprisingly nice guesthouse. We both loved and hated that it was filled to the brim with gorgeous furniture and intricate decorative wall carvings made of solid blocks of hardwood. In keeping with the evening's theme, a woodcarver based in Siem Reap struck up conversation with us in labored English during dinner in a restaurant where the regular patrons watched us curiously but would not make eye contact with us. We gathered that he was on a business trip to buy wood from the settlers of this fragmenting forest. 

Our spirits soared when we rode by an eco-tourism information center and guesthouse on our way out of town the next morning. After parking our bikes, we were offered a plate of delicious papaya and drinking water free of charge, but the shy and smiling staff did not speak English. We saw fliers posted about a tour to observe the endangered Siamese Crocodile and wondered if it would be worth trying to arrange something anyway. Luckily, a research biologist who was staying there returned from the field and explained that the English-speaking guide-owner was away in Koh Kong. Too bad. We pedaled on, taking a short cut on a platform bike ferry like the one in Chi Phat, this time captained by an 8-year-old. 

We stopped for a snack in a shady spot on the side of the road. Shortly thereafter, a policeman on a motorbike slowed at the sight of us and cut his engine. He dismounted. "Oh boy. Here we go," we thought. He didn't say anything. He walked to the other side of the road, turned his back, and took a piss. Once finished with his highest priority, he gave us a big grin and sat down cross-legged on the ground with us, his firearm dangling off the handlebars of his motorbike. He didn't seem to speak or understand a world of English and our Khmer was still sadly limited to a few basic phrases, but we all pretended to have a coherent conversation through hand gestures. When that lapsed, he offered us a cigarette. Once a motorbike entourage of other police passed by, he abruptly got up and zoomed off. We made another mental tick mark in the category of "Things that Would Never Happen in The States".

Next, a group of outgoing dirt bikers cut their engines to inform us that another bicycle traveler was close behind us. They relayed that he was traveling light, didn't want to spend the money to stay in a guesthouse, and looked like he could use a few more calories in his digestive system on a daily basis. So it was not much of shock when a couple of miles down the road, as we caught our breath at the top of a rise, he closed the gap. "Hello, Sven! Your reputation proceeds you." We had the usual get-to-know-you exchange of bicycle travelers, then he informed us that he would ride with us “because he was tired of riding alone,” even though he could obviously go much faster.

We were just a couple miles shy of reaching the next town when we were caught out in a downpour, the only one we had cycled in since somewhere in the middle of Vietnam. When it did not let up after arriving to a small town, even Sven decided to splurge on a $5 room. While Sven was speedy in the bike seat, we found out that we were all compatibly slow with getting going in the mornings. That is about where our similarities ended. He had been on the road more or less continually for eight years, with a little time spent in his homeland of Germany. The point of each day was not photos, or even to say hello to the people he passed by, but simply to move further along his intended route. He had stories and he was eager to share them. Perhaps a little too eager at first. Our day was a barrage of, “One time, when I was in _______ …” and the blank could be filled with any ridiculous country you can imagine. This included Pakistan, where he was escorted by military babysitters who determined exactly when, where, and how he ate and slept.

By the end of the day, our route through the Cardamoms had flattened out as we crossed valleys of meadows and farmland. While this provided views of the surrounding mountains, progress was still a bit slow on the rutted dirt road. In the early evening, we pulled over to chat with a young German couple on motorbikes. In an exciting coincidence, Sven quickly discovered that they were all from the same small town, though they did not know anyone in common. We invited Arne and Claudia to camp with us, but without a tent and gear, they were determined to push on to the next major city of Battambang. The three of us set up camp on an abandoned side road and enjoyed our last night of our Cardamom crossing. 

The next morning would be a straight flat shot on a dusty road and a busy highway in to Battambang, but not before dealing with a few surprises. We woke up to find an ant invasion of our everything--panniers, shoes, food, under the tent, and crawling all over our bikes—nothing was spared. They had even chewed small holes in Matt’s sweat-encrusted cycling shirt. While dealing with dispersing them, Matt’s back suddenly tightened and hurt him for the rest of the day. Before leaving camp, he noticed a tear in the sidewall of his tire, but I encouraged him to ride on it and see if it would hold until Battambang. It didn’t. So that foldable yet hefty spare tire we had been carrying for a year and a half actually came in handy for a roadside repair in the blazing sun. ​

While our final day was not the most inspiring, we didn’t regret taking on the challenge of this route in the least. As the natural resources of the Cardamom Mountains are increasingly targeted by both large and small-scale exploiters, change is evident at every turn in the road. As is the case around the globe, the improved and expanded road network we were relying upon for our experience is also a culprit in the accelerated pace of change. But there is still plenty left to conserve. There is undeniably great eco-tourism potential, so the question remains: what would it take for this area to become the next Chi Phat?

Upon finishing our stint volunteering for Marine Conservation Cambodia, we returned to the pleasant and funky riverside town of Kampot. First priority was we treating ourselves to several days of yummy Western meals at the plethora of ex-pat owned establishments to celebrate Christmastime. Although, in keeping with Jewish tradition, we did eat Chinese for Christmas dinner itself since most places were closed for staff holiday parties. 
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It was refreshing to be back on the bicycles after residing on a tiny island for over a month, so much so that we took an ambitious day ride to the top of Bokor Mountain on Christmas Eve. It was incredible to see the influence of elevation on nature as tropical forest featuring hornbills and gibbons gave way to foggy scrubland towards the chilly upper reaches of the oversized hill. It was strange to gaze down through breaks in the clouds to the sweaty flatlands 4,000 feet below. Even stranger still was the incongruent assortment of development capping the mountain. Originally a French Hill Station where the colonists would retreat from the lowland heat and humidity, many of the buildings later served as refuge from the enemy as Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces duked it out. We explored the shell of a once luxurious casino and a church that had been occupied by the opposing forces. 

Then, in stark contrast to the historical sites, we locked up our bikes in the corner of an expansive, multi-tiered, but completely empty parking lot, the likes we have not seen since leaving Suburbia USA. We wandered in to a massive casino hotel that would not look out of place in Vegas, except for the surprisingly small casino itself and the modestly dressed staff. While all of this felt oddly out-of-place for Cambodia, what really made us wonder what bizarre world we had stumbled upon was the Christmas festivities in the form of poorly executed gingerbread houses with styrofoam trimmings and Khmer employees awkwardly dressed as Santas and elves. If all of this doesn't sound so weird to you, consider that Cambodia is a poor, predominantly Buddhist country, so commercialized Christmas decorations are essentially non-existent there. 

​We weren't really sure what clientele Thansur Bokor Highland Resort was targeting, either with the Christmas gimmicks or with building the ridiculous resort in the first place. However, one thing was for sure. After "leasing" the entirety of Bokor National Park from the Cambodian government for 99 years, the Chinese-owned parent company Sokimex Group constructed what has to be the nicest and smoothest road in all of Cambodia in order to whisk guests straight to the casino's grand entrance. The national park signs have all been removed, so you would never know you were technically in a national park (unless of course you knew). Now with a full dose (overdose?) of "Christmas spirit" and the privatization of public land, we took full advantage of that pristine pavement to fly down the mountain in a fraction of the hours it took to huff our way to the top. 

Sadly, Bokor National Park is just one example of the trend of auctioning off of national parks to major developers as Cambodia's leaders seek to make the elite even richer in order to stay in power. For China in particular, Cambodia has recently become an alluring land of investment opportunities. The Thansur Bokor Highland Resort claims to be stewarding the park by providing increased enforcement personnel to patrol against illegal logging and poaching of the forest's many endangered species. On the other hand, they are depleting habitat with plans for a golf course, cable car, and water park, not to mention planting a monoculture of thousands of non-native trees to "complement the beauty" of the resort.

On Christmas Day, we celebrated with an evening boat cruise up the Praek Tuek Chhu River. We enjoyed the perspective of watching the sun set behind Bokor Mountain since we had just cycled up there the day before. However, the best part was seeing synchronized fire flies for the first time once it was fully dark. The insects tended to rest on vegetation instead of flying around, so large patches of trees and shrubs were covered with coordinated blinking. Appropriately, they really looked like twinkling Christmas lights!

The next day, we packed up and said goodbye to Kampot. Since it had been a few days since we had seen the ocean, we aimed for Ream Beach on the border of Ream National Park. The last few miles of riding were slow going on a rocky sandy track in the dark, but that only made our destination of Monkey Maya Hostel feel that much more remote and special. Fortunately, the dorm was full, as were the well-above-our-budget bungalows, so the owners were amenable to having us pitch our tent next to the beachside volleyball court. At dinner they introduced us to another cycling couple from Germany who had quite an adventure arriving to Monkey Maya earlier that morning. They had followed a road cutting through the national park, only to have it worsen and eventually disappear as it approached the coast. Once it was dark, they ended up sleeping on a random beach without camping gear or food while their reserved bungalow at Monkey Maya awaited them. In the morning, they pushed their bikes along the rocky coastline only to discover they had slept only 800 meters away from their goal!  

Very smartly, Monkey Maya offers a free beer to anyone who collects a rice sack of garbage off of the beach. Consequently, this was easily the cleanest beach we have seen our journey. Of course, when duty calls to drink free beer, we can be counted on. So we wiled away the day by picking the micro-trash out of the beautiful white sand that others skip over in an effort to fill their bags quickly, and dipped in the calm water when we got too sweaty. The isolation of the place induced relaxation, but that gave us space to contemplate our unstructured future, which led to a heated "discussion" over our hard-earned free beer with a stunning sunset backdrop. Matt commented, "Only we can find a way to make such a beautiful place so depressing." Nonetheless, we were grateful to have visited this newly "discovered" beach. We saw evidence that it is only a matter of time until other developments come in, and chances are high that they won't be as sensitivity-designed or responsibly-operated as Monkey Maya.

Things were easier in the morning as we became refocused on our short term plan of cycling to Otres Beach. The main area of "Otres 1" had a Wild West meets the beach feel to it with an eclectic range of establishments lining a rutted, bumpy, red dirt road. We got what we needed--lunch and info on boats to Koh Ta Kiev--and got out, retreating to more chill and inexpensive "Otres Village" set back from the beach. Although we didn't know it at the time, and neither did the place itself, Otres 1 qualified for "before it's gone" status. It may already be gone as I write this as government officials abruptly ordered the beachfront establishments to move off of the beach. Beaches are public property after all, unless of course you have deep pockets and know the right people. While it may be a seemingly arbitrary and ultimately discriminatory enforcement of the law, I don't see it as any great loss of an amazing place, although your average backpacker of Southeast Asia is certain to be heartbroken. However, given the choice, I would take a backpacker haven with laid-back independent businesses any day over another "soulless mega-resort," which is widely speculated to be the motivation of the sudden eviction notices.

The next morning we took a boat out to Koh Ta Kiev, one of the few islands in the Sihanoukville area not (currently) slated for exclusive luxury resort ruination. The boat dropped us off at our intended camping spot at The Last Point which we quickly concluded was no longer our intention. People had raved about this island and insisted that we go there, but our first impression was a non-existent beach with a surfline filled with litter and torn up sea grass. We knew we could do better and the hungover staff didn't mind in the least pointing out a trail through the forest to the other side of the island. The next spot of Coral Beach was buzzing and definitely the hip place to be on the island. We balked at the $25 rate for an otherwise enticing stilted bungalow and they were firm on the no camping policy. We had a similar experience at the next one down the beach called Ten103. We were almost ready to settle for an uninspiring but cheap shack, though at the most authentically Khmer establishment thus far--KTK Bungalows. Luckily, my stubborn thoroughness kicked in despite my exhaustion from being hit with a food-related stomach bug in the middle of the previous night. The last option, Crusoe Island, was rumored to be closed back on the mainland or we would have taken a boat directly to it in the first place. But what we found was fully operational and pretty close to perfect. However, we did appreciate our "discovery" even more after having walked the length of the island and investigated all other options. That method of multi-hour exploration wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the loose sand with loaded backpacks in the mid-day heat while I suffered waves of nausea and cramps.

We began our Crusoe fantasy by staking down our tent for $2 per night on a rocky outcrop just above the high tide line with no other campers in sight. It was a short walk down the beach to the unexpectedly amazing restaurant and creatively designed hang out area. So then it was no surprise that we decided to stay a couple of extra days. We were so enamored with the place that we even offered to step in as the next round of volunteer staff for an extended stay, but the nice Khmer lady who owns it already had enough help for the foreseeable future. 

In keeping with tradition, we had a mellow New Year's Eve and fell asleep by ten to the bumping and thumping of concerts across the bay at Otres and Sihanoukville. A night swim amongst abundant bioluminescent plankton was the only fireworks show we needed to see anyway. It was an ideal last beach experience for the foreseeable future as our route would take us away from the immediate coastline after we returned to the mainland.

We arrived to Cambodia's coast at Kep, a couple of weeks after our original plan that was made before my rim cracked in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Kep is an odd place in its modern incarnation, but its quirkiness is rooted in its history. It was first a beach resort town for the French and Cambodian elite from the turn of the 20th century until the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. The French colonial mansions as well as modernist villas were abruptly abandoned, later being stripped of nearly everything as impoverished local residents did whatever they could to survive during those years and through their aftermath. Kep is now on its way to thriving once again as one of the fastest growing areas for tourism, despite only having one small beach with white sand trucked over from Sihanoukville every couple of weeks. There is not a whole lot to do in Kep after gazing upon a collection of seaside statues, poking around the decaying shells of structures built for fancier times, and eating Kep's signature dish of blue crab cooked with local green pepper corns. That does make it ideal for relaxation though, and we found the perfect place to attempt this at a small hillside resort called Khmer Hands Bungalows. It is run as a social enterprise by an American-Khmer couple who provide disadvantaged youth with hospitality and English skills to open up further opportunities in life.

From Kep, we took a boat shuttle out to Koh Tonsay, a.k.a. Rabbit Island, to take the relaxing to the next level. It is not much more than a collection of basic bungalows run by several Khmer families on a tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand. While most people simply alternate between sitting on the beach, swimming, eating, and of course drinking, my idea of relaxing is catching up on this blog. I did at least bring my productivity to a hammock at the water's edge, so the office view was quite soothing as I typed away. That is, until the battery died mid-afternoon several hours before the generator was fired up for the evening. Then I was simply forced to enjoy a sunset and happy hour beers that were cheaper than those on the mainland.

After returning to the mainland from Rabbit Island, it wasn't long before we were headed out on another boat to a neighboring island in the gulf. In Kep, we had been in discussion with an organization called Marine Conservation Cambodia about the possibility of volunteering with them. They invited us to check out their research base on Koh Seh (Horse Island) for a few days to learn more about them. As the boat pulled in to the pier, we were greeted by a tribe of outgoing kids wearing homemade cardboard masks. We had happened to arrive just as Halloween festivities were, a trick or treat circuit to all of the bungalows, and a not-so-scary story campfire. Almost all of the kids had grown up in Cambodia, so the phrase "trick or treat" had to be explained to them. It didn't stick, so by the time they got to our bungalow, I had to prompt them with "What do you say?" while holding the candy bowl above my head. They all put on their sweetest smiles and in unison said, "Please!" It was perhaps the only time I have ever told a child not to say please! "Nope, don't say please, say trick or treat!" The evening was a great introduction to the island and we felt instantly absorbed into the family atmosphere.

The next couple of days we snorkeled along the reef, cleaned up a small section of the beach covered in plastic pollution from the Cambodian and Vietnamese mainlands, and chatted with the staff and volunteers on the island. We got a good vibe from it all so, while watching a brilliant sunset, we decided that we should commit at least a month of our journey to contributing to the efforts here in any way we could.

However, with limited internet connectivity on the island, we weren’t quite ready to jump in right away. We needed a bit of time to be ready to disconnect, so we returned to Kep. After a nice evening at the Treetop Bungalows, we cycled a couple of hours west to the riverside town of Kampot, a pleasant haven for a plethora of ex-pats to run restaurants and bars all catering to each other. Our visit coincided with the first annual Kampot Writers and Readers Festival so town was a little more lively than usual for that time of the year. In keeping with Cambodian style, it was still a laidback affair with loose organization, but in principle it was a really cool idea. After attending one disappointing session about travel writing, I decided that it wasn’t worth sparing the time to try the other events though. I had a lot of my own travel writing to catch up on!

We had picked some simple and cheap riverside bungalows a ways out of town center as a quiet place to work. It was peaceful for a couple of days, despite loud construction of new bungalows right next to ours beginning at 7am. Unfortunately, the weekend came around and an obnoxious group of partiers showed up that we dubbed “The Glitter People” as they were for some reason covered in silver glitter. The Glitter People joined the music pumping at the bungalow competitors next door, then returned in the middle of the night unable to remember which bungalow was theirs. We know this because a couple of them stood in front of ours and stupidly debated about whether or not their bungalow had two bikes parked in front of it….um, no dude, not your cabin.

We relocated into the town center the next morning, which allowed for several days of café hopping, literally spending all day working on the computer, only stretching the legs and getting a change of scenery as the next meal or snack time approached. We found the best spot for coffee, amazing mango and passionfruit sorbet, and even authentic Italian pasta and gnocchi cooked up along local food in a row of food stalls over the course of our daily wanderings. After a day or so of errands and shopping to prepare for the isolation of island living, we cycled back to Kep and headed out to Koh Seh to begin our month with Marine Conservation Cambodia.

We were looking forward to exploring the Mekong Delta on our way to Cambodia, but for the second time in Vietnam, a bicycle breakdown rerouted our plan. Halfway through the second day after departing Ho Chi Minh City, I suddenly felt a telltale rhythmic bump in my rear tire. It was now my turn to deal with the same ordeal Matt had gone through a couple of months prior in the Yunnan. The cantilever brakes had worn distinctive grooves in my wheel rims over time, making the rear one thin enough crack. We knew our best bet was to return to HCMC where we had recently had our bikes maintained by Van, the owner of Saigon Bike Shop. 

Ironically, by turning back, we discovered what we had been seeking but failing to find: a backroad path through small farming and canal communities that make up the heart of delta life. Unfortunately, that path soon dumped us back on the same type of busy road we had been trying to get off of. Of course, the highway was the most direct route in to the city and we had little time to spare before our Vietnam visas expired. We decided the 50 or so miles we endured was the most unpleasant stretch of road we have ever ridden, made even more stressful by the gradual widening of the crack and bulging of the tire. Yes, we could have taken transport, but at the time it seemed a bearable distance to ride versus the inevitable hassle of putting bikes on a bus. 

Van built two new wheels for my bike no problem, and on the last possible day for us to leave the country without penalty, we cycled from HCMC to the border crossing at Moc Bai, thus completely rearranging our route through Cambodia as well. Originally, we had hoped to cross at the most southerly border checkpoint and travel along Cambodia's coast before exploring inland. Now we were headed to its capital city of Phnom Penh first, then turning south for the coast. We held a new appreciation for the simplicity of Cambodian visa procedures after dealing with the ridiculousness of visas in Vietnam. With indefinitely extendable visas issued on our arrival at the border, we crossed into only our seventh country in fifteen months of travel.

The following day we were taught an unforgettable lesson about Cambodian roads. In Vietnam, the traffic necessitated always taking the smallest road possible, which in Cambodia equates to the unpaved dirt tracks any time one leaves the main highway. It had rained quite hard the night before, so it was actually a mud track, but still rideable, at least initially. But in the rice fields beyond the village, the mud suddenly turned to thick sticky clay, rideable only for the short distance it took to completely fill up my fenders and jam up the wheels. Unable to move, I dismounted and tried to push my bike, but it wouldn't budge. I dug enough clay out of the fender to at least turn it around before it got stuck again. A bemused local woman working in a nearby rice field came over and told me in broken English that the way was no good and I had to turn around, which I had clearly already done. I agreed. She told me again. I agreed. She repeated herself, and I agreed again. This went on for a while. When the helpful woman finally felt she had informed me enough times not to keep going, she turned her attention to helping me dig out clay and push my bike a few feet at a time. Meanwhile, in keeping with the fact that I am always the tester of road conditions from my position in the front, Matt stood at a safe distance from the mud pit and watched the fun unfold.

You would think this defeat would be enough for us to return to the main road, but instead we took a different fork in the road that looked promisingly less muddy. It was all good until the track sloped downhill and simply disappeared underwater for as long as we could see. We resigned ourselves to following the highway in to Phnom Penh, thus learning that a main road in Cambodia is equivalent to a side road in Vietnam thanks to its much lower population density and less developed economy. Besides, the highway provided the entertainment of watching endless overloaded minivans and tuk tuks pass by, crowded to a degree we had not yet seen in Asia. The back hatches of the minivans were open, with luggage and bags extended beyond the bumper of the vehicle with ropes. People sat on the cargo with their feet dangling out the back, others sat among the things strapped to the roof. Apparently the road was exceptionally busy as people returned to Phnom Penh after spending a holiday with family in the countryside.

Vendors lined the road with snacks for the multitude of travelers. At one major intersection, we were beckoned to stop and buy crickets fried with chilies. I bought a portion as a courtesy for the photo opportunity, but of course we tried them as well. The flavor was generally undesirable, likely not from the cricket itself but from what I suspect was rancid oil it was cooked in. Conveniently, we amused the passengers hanging out the back of a van when we handed the baggie of crickets off to them with motions of distaste just as the vehicle slowly accelerated from the side of the road.

Before arriving in Cambodia, several people told us independently of each other that "Cambodia is chill." Arriving to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's "hectic" capital city, this certainly appeared to hold true. The pace of life, the traffic, the nature of the people were all quite mellow in comparison to HCMC. This chillness was most evident in visiting a few of the city's markets where we really had to work hard to get someone's attention while shopping around for a few items. Having recently taken care of a slew of travel errands in HCMC and no visa deadlines to constrain our itinerary, we had the leisure of exploring Phnom Penh more thoroughly than we normally do in large cities.

We made up for never visiting the Grand Palace in Bangkok by spending an afternoon at Cambodia's Royal Palace complex with temples of similar design, as are the other wats we have since seen in Phnom Penh and beyond. While the coronation hall and silver pagoda were memorably beautiful, we were most intrigued by an aged mural facing the courtyard and extending the length of all four barrier walls. Apparently it depicts the Indian epic of Ramayana with Cambodian adaptations.

Sadly, Cambodia's street food scene was also "chill", as in nearly nonexistent. After the vibrant selection in Vietnam that we ate almost exclusively from, we struggled to find equivalent restaurants that sufficiently filled the void. While the local markets had some food stalls in the spirit of street food, our biggest success was a place called MC Coffee that became our go-to breakfast. Iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk was served just as it was in Vietnam, but instead of fried egg banh mi sandwiches, we had the Khmer classic of strips of fried pork and omelette served over rice with a side of pickled veggies.

The night market was a fun scene even though the selection of food focused on skewers of over-processed meat that was deep-fried on demand. A square of inward facing food stands surrounded an area spread with woven mats and narrow walkways to access them. Large groups of friends and families sat in a circle on the mats, piles of shoes at the fringes. We did our part by sampling an Angry Birds mystery meat skewer and finally "getting around" to trying a duck fetus egg. Ok, I ate the boiled egg with a partially developed duck fetus inside while Matt documented. The flavor was fairly similar to a normal hard boiled egg, but obviously the variable consistency and textures were not. It's definitely one of those foods that looks way worse than it tastes though. And then there's the mental bias too.

No visit to Cambodia is complete without recognizing the gruesome and still too recent history of the Khmer Rouge's rise to power and the consequences of it that Cambodia is still dealing with today. We began our education of this element of the country at the Tuol Sleng Museum, also known as the Genocide Museum, and previously known as Security Prison S-21 to the Khmer Rouge. It has been preserved as the largest of many detention and torture centers that had the agenda of extracting false confessions of anti-revolutionary activity from those accused by the Pol Pot regime. It is a particularly sobering experience to walk through the very rooms where prisoners were locked down to metal bed frames in isolation, or shackled by the ankles to each other along a common metal bar, all with original equipment on display. It was also strange and somewhat telling to reflect on how easily the format of a standard school was converted into a prison. Rows upon rows of concrete rooms only required the additions of metal bars in the windows and barbed wire enclosing the outdoor hallways to make the repurposing complete.

Once the accused was sufficiently tortured to confess to their made-up crime, they were transported to a place now known as The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek for mass execution by crude and brutal methods. We paid our respects to this site as a stop on our first day cycling south out of Phnom Penh. A measured but articulate audio tour effectively sets a quiet respectful tone as visitors take in the mounds, holes, bone shards, and even tatters of clothing that all serve testament to the thousands of innocent Khmer who were killed here, from infants to elderly. A plot to maintain absolute control through absolute fear devised by a deranged and paranoid man, but a cunning man who first came to power by appealing to the impoverished and disenfranchised. The ranks of the Khmer Rouge swelled when rural Cambodia was at its most vulnerable, having been devastated by years of "secret bombing" by the good ol' US of A. 

The influencing factors, the circumstances of instability, or any other context to set the terror of the Khmer Rouge in, does not make it seem any more intelligible. The best we can do is to honor the memory of the victims and respect the lessons of history with bringing the intention of peace into all aspects of our lives.

With the significance of these historical sites on our minds, we continued on and soon had no choice but to be absorbed in the joys of contemporary Cambodia again. We detoured a short distance to Tonle Bati, a scenic lake popular with Phnom Penh folks on the weekends. As such, stilted and thatched roofed wooden platforms extend along one side of the lake, each with an attendant who will bring you overpriced food from a nearby restaurant should you choose to relax the day away on their platform. Or, Matt and Casey style, you can rent the platform for $1 and make your own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while watching orange-robed monks cruise by in a motorboat. With the sun low in the sky, we thought about how this would make an ideal spot to spend the night. The platform owner declined to give us permission, but it seemed that she offered her home instead. We weren't quite sure, so she called over a younger lady with some basic English and she offered her home as well. We didn't know what to do then, since it seemed rude not to go with the first lady who offered, but the younger girl became more insistent we should go with her. 

We followed Dara back to her family's home and picked up her BFF Sokny, with more confident English, on the way. Their tall stilted house was quite new, but still very modest by Western standards, especially considering the lack of any substantial furniture and possessions inside. The heart of the home was actually underneath the house, where hammocks were strung up adjacent to large day bed bamboo platforms and an outdoor kitchen. We sat down there for a while to meet the rest of the family and a few curious neighbors, then the girls offered to take us to see Ta Prohm and Yeay Peau, both historical temples from the Angkorian era. Despite a soccer game wrapping up in the courtyard of the temple complex, the otherwise quiet and deserted grounds at dusk lent an eerie feel to exploring the site.

In keeping with all of our homestay experiences, it had to get confusing at some point. Sokny told us to order off the overpriced menu from the lake and she would bring us dinner from the restaurant. We weren't too keen on paying those prices, but she explained that we didn't have to pay, or could pay "as you wish." However, the family had not prepared enough food for us. Fair enough, we were very unexpected guests. Then Dara and she returned with the ingredients of what we ordered and cooked it for us, while we never saw the family eat. After a brief period of improvised socializing after dinner with the friendly family, Sokny politely informed us it was time for bed and they settled us in to the parents' bedroom, complete with a mosquito net and fan. We did need to deploy our camping air pads though as the woven mats provided weren't quite enough cushioning from the wooden floor.

Early to bed, early to rise holds true in Cambodia as well, so the family was already doing chores and yard work when we made an appearance at 6:00am the next morning. We were offered noodle soup and coffee, which we accepted, so the girls zoomed off to pick it up at the restaurant for us. Oh...Oh well. After we ate, we said our goodbyes and gave them enough money that would certainly cover whatever the ambiguous food expenses may have been. 

Overall, it was an enjoyable experience that gave us a bit of insight into a Khmer rice farming family's daily existence in a Cambodian village. At least on the surface, it's not so different from rural life in other Southeast Asian countries. Kind of like Southeast Asian beer, the nuances of flavor may vary slightly, but at the end of the night, it's all same same, and not so different. That said, we were pleasantly surprised by a relative multitude of decent stouts available in Cambodia in addition to the usual lagers. This is a trend that other countries would do well to adopt!

Still on our way to the coast, we next stopped at Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center where various animals, many of them endangered species, have been confiscated from poachers or abusive owners. While we rode around the extensive grounds on our fully loaded bikes, we saw many animals we could only dream of being lucky enough to see in the wild, such as sun bears, a leopard, and a new favorite species of monkey called a pileated gibbon. Better still, we saw some that we did not even know existed, like the binturong, which Matt described as "a rat of unusual size." After observing Khmer group after Khmer group obnoxiously harassing the animals in their enclosures to get them to do something "exciting", we realized the scope of the challenge that organizations such as Wildlife Alliance face in this country. If these were people coming to see animals, supposedly with an awareness of why the animals were there, and THIS was how they chose to treat them...More frustrating still was the lack of supervision to ensure a truly peaceful existence for the animals. Perhaps they could charge locals a bit more than 50 cents and hire some visitor supervisory staff or mandatory guides. After all, the well-behaved foreigners had to pay ten times the local rate.

After the wildlife sanctuary, we had intentions of checking out a historical hilltop temple, but with the late hour of the day, we decided to push on to the town of Takeo. We settled in to the nicest hotel room we have ever paid $6 for, and went out to some food carts along the riverside. We shared a spicy green mango salad and gave the skewer thing another chance, but the grilled chicken wings were as meatless as they looked, just skin and flimsy bones. As we were finishing up, a downpour came out of nowhere and we took shelter under the tarp of another vendor along with some sociable Khmer guys who invited us to join their slightly soaked dinner featuring more beer than food. We enjoyed toast after toast of watery beer on ice until the rain abated enough to make it back to our room.

​Once dried off, we took a several hour nap before awaking to an alarm at 2am. We had an important FaceTime meeting with a class of Coloradan high school seniors, but not just any high school seniors. Our sister-in-law, Lauren, teaches a leadership course and incorporated our journey into the preparatory curriculum for the students to design and actualize Capstone Projects. We were honored to have the Before It's Gone Journey be an example of "the ultimate Capstone Project" for the students, even if we don't always feel that way about it ourselves. The students had great questions that really made us reflect on our journey as well.

Leaving Hoi An, we stopped at My Son ruins, a small complex of temples dedicated to worshipping the Hindu god Shiva. The site is thought to be the longest continuously inhabited place in Indochina as an integral part of the Champa kingdom that ruled what is now Central Vietnam from the 3rd to 17th centuries. It was designated a UNESCO site in 1999, despite extensive damage caused by US bombing of the Viet Cong hiding out there during the war. We noticed bomb craters were almost as numerous as the crumbled buildings glowing warmly in the evening light.

We were determined to get back into the hills on the Ho Chi Minh Highway, so from My Son we turned inland on one of those “short cuts that’s really a long cut” roads that Matt always digs up on his various route finding apps. It may not have been such slow going if the dirt road had not turned to puddles and mud in a heavy rainstorm the night before. Matt really prefers that I ride ahead of him, so I was the one to discover a deceptively deep puddle with some loose rocks on the bottom, enough to send my top-heavy big-booty bike careening into the mud. Of course, I went down with it and Matt safely documented from afar. Ok, he did get one boot muddy too while helping to extract my bike and me from our predicament.

A few more days of hot, hilly riding (what’s new?), and meeting some real characters along the way, brought us to the likeable city of Kon Tum. We encountered genuinely friendly people and lots of good street food, the two most important aspects of our travel at this point. That evening the streets echoed with deep drum beats while groups of adolescent boys roamed the streets and took over intersections for lion dances and fire-blowing performances. While watching one troupe perform in the courtyard of a mansion in exchange for a generous donation from the occupants, we learned that this was only the lead up to the actual Mid-Autumn Festival the next day.

Not wanting to miss out on even better festivities, we decided to stay an extra day in Kon Tum. The following night was more of the same lion dances, but with the addition of teams of performers snaking long, flowing dragon puppets through the streets. That alone was quite a feat since so many people turned out to watch from the seat of their motorbike that the streets were packed and intersections were at a stand still, but this appeared to just be part of the tradition. The festival is largely a celebration of children, who are given gifts of lanterns and fun masks to wear. In Kon Tum, bands of teens had crafted their own large-scale lanterns, the ever-popular minions included, which they paraded above the crowds like a low-tech Macy’s day parade. We also bought some of the traditional moon cakes from temporary stalls that reminded us of fireworks stands for 4th of July. The dense moon cakes were filled with a sweet paste and a hardened egg yolk in each half when split in half.

We continued south, overnighting in another fun city called Buon Ma Thuot, and passing by scenic Lak Lake, then arriving late in the day at the junction for Hwy 722, an alternative route to Dalat. The first ten miles of our ride the next morning took us on a gentle climb through coffeeland and poor communities, but the road was in solid shape even with a fun rope-pulled boat ferry crossing on a small river. Then it abruptly turned to dirt as it steeply ascended a hill that formed one side of the broad valley. The road soon narrowed to a deeply rutted footpath, which in and of itself would have been rideable except that it was made of a treacherous layer of extremely slippery compacted clay. We barely maintained enough traction to push forward and even then the wheels slipped out from underneath our bikes a few times.

How could this be the correct road? Our route apps insisted that it was, so I googled “Road 722 in Vietnam” to see if we could get more information on what lay ahead, optimistic that this was just a temporary inconvenience. Sure enough, a blog entry popped up written by some motorbikers who had similar ambitions as us, but sought out this road from the Dalat end. It took them seven hours to go 15 kilometers, mostly pushing their bikes through really rough conditions. And they were going downhill.

We had provisions to camp, which would be a given if we continued on. But after only covering one and a half miles in two hours and not really having any fun, we realized the scope of the adventure. It would be a real feat of endurance with some moments of misery to make it the 40ish miles with 5,000 feet of elevation gain to Dalat. Or we could turn around and take the regular road to Dalat, thus having more time to see more of Vietnam. As though it was sent to put an end to our indecision, it started to rain and the leeches came out. So... We reached the same town where we had started that morning in the pouring rain. We were muddy, soaked, and disheartened from not being hardcore, but still happy to be off that hellish trail marked as a highway on multiple maps.

Highway 725 proved to be a real road, even recently expanded and improved, so the 4,000-foot climb up to Dalat went quite smoothly. While the cool mountain climate requiring long-sleeves (or a winter jacket if you are Vietnamese) was indeed a nice relief from the heat, we were not particularly drawn to the city itself. The real charm of the area is in the outlying attractions, such as waterfalls, which we were not exactly motivated to ride to on the one rainy day we had for exploring. But since we had worked so hard to get up there, we had to at least see something exciting. This took the form of “The Crazy House”, a fanciful creation of a radical architect who seemingly sculpted buildings out of cement rather than constructed them. Dalat’s famed kitsch is popular with Chinese tourists, whom we followed on vine-shaped staircases that traversed steep rooftops while basking in the irony of a “natural theme to inspire people to be closer with nature” made entirely out of shoddily-painted concrete.

We actually much preferred the 100 Roofs Café, a lesser-known alternative with the same core concept as the Crazy House. We stumbled upon it by chance and almost passed it by since the tiny storefront did not reveal the vast multi-floor maze of dark rooms and narrow passageways inside. It would have been perfect for Halloween. We got an intimate tour from the daughter of the visionary architect, who is--not too surprisingly--friends with the creator of the Crazy House.

In the afternoon, we took shelter from the rain in Dalat’s extensive market, sampling strawberries and wine, local products that thrive in the otherwise pine-forested hilly terrain. A nice stop at Pongour Falls on the way out of town the next day rounded out our Dalat experience.

Next we were aiming for the one and only Ho Chi Minh City, more commonly called Saigon by the people who live there, albeit with a little bit of trepidation. We were able to take back roads for most of the way, rapidly descending into the heat once again.  Our route protected us from the worst of the traffic, but gazing across hazy valleys indicated we had not escaped HCMC’s notorious air pollution blowing inland. Out came the pollution masks for the first time since… I don’t know when.

Having arrived to Saigon first through an industrial zone and shipping port, we were pleasantly surprised with the feel of the city once we got into the heart of it. Referred to by numbered districts a la Hunger Games, we headed straight for District One and found an alley-based neighborhood with quieter guesthouses than the nearby backpacker district of Pham Ngu Lao, lazily known as PNL. The volume of traffic was certainly intense, but having already been subjected to two months of Vietnamese-style driving, it was not nearly as intimidating as we had been led to believe it would be. The one issue we really had was motorbikes honking us, as pedestrians, when they opted for the sidewalk over the road. Really? Where would they prefer us to walk, in the middle of the road?

After a few days of taking in Saigon, we concluded that it was like a Vietnamese version of New York City: real, gritty, edgy, bustling, essential to find your niche, but also possible to find anything you desire, such as… craft beer! Hands down the best craft beer we have sampled on this journey, we could have visited Pasteur Street Brewing Company every night if the ol’ travel budget allowed. It came as no surprise once we learned the brewmaster was previously brewing at Upslope in Boulder, Colorado. I was smitten with a passionfruit wheat and Matt loved the perfectly hoppy IPA.

Besides the best beer, we also found the best bike mechanic of our journey thus far. Van claims that the well-stocked, fairly-priced Saigon Bike Shop is only his hobby; his bread and butter comes from customizable bike tours of the Mekong Delta and beyond. We spent a day pampering the bikes with everything they needed except a good cleaning, then turned our attention towards various errands that I will spare you the details of in the city where you can find anything you desire. Including fresh-baked cream puffs and McDonald’s soft serve. Not that we would know from firsthand experience or anything…

One important errand worth noting was meeting up with Tieme, an ex-pat who cycled his way to Saigon from the Netherlands and had some amazing stories to tell over dinner one night. He also happened to hold the key to our future of travel: a non-expired ATM card. We had contacted him through the Warm Showers network to see if he could receive it for us. Little did we know that would involve tracking it down at an obscure post office location to be picked up in person. Dinner was the least we owed him for this essential favor!

All of our errands left us little time for sightseeing in Saigon, but we did make it to the hard-hitting exhibits of the War Remnants Museum one afternoon. In addition to an explicit overview of the American-Vietnam War, it also had an important display of the ongoing effects of Agent Orange exposure in Vietnamese society, and a moving collection of photographs taken by photojournalists from all sides who perished in the conflict.

We took comfort from this gravity with some seriously amazing street food, perhaps the best we have encountered in Vietnam, if not this trip, and that is saying a lot considering the time we spent in Thailand. It took a while for me to come around to Vietnamese food, but when I did, it was wholeheartedly. Bun thit nuong was a personal favorite of ours, made up of grilled pork over cold vermicelli rice noodles, garnished with cucumber, a selection of herbs, and mildly spicy fish sauce. Yes, folks, my husband loves things covered in fish sauce these days. Proof that travel is life-changing!

We could have spent another week in Saigon, ideally not running errands, but our visas were rapidly approaching an expiration date and we still had the whole Mekong Delta to see.