Vietnam and Cambodian Adventure

It was the last day of exams and I was feeling good. Never mind how the exams went, I was just glad they were over. So I was on the internet after visiting the Oxfam shop in Sydney, thinking that, since I was in such a good mood, maybe I would see if there was a way I could donate some money to Oxfam; them in particular since I had always liked the sensible way the charity ran their programs and distributed aid. So I was on the internet and came across the Oxfam Challenge, a 500 km bike ride through Vietnam and Cambodia. Participants needed to raise $5000 and they left for the ride just days after I was due to finish Uni. Perfect! And better yet, I had always wanted to get into cycle touring – it seemed like an exciting way to help out a great organisation as well as gain some invaluable life experience, since the only other country I’d ever been to was New Zealand, which is not exactly culture shock material.

I spoke to my parents about it and after a lot of warning that it would be hard work (the fund raising, that is, never mind the actual ride). I decided to go ahead with it. So then began the arduous task of trying to raise $5000, which we raised mainly through selling good old chocolates. Mum ended up taking over the logistical side of the fund raising, seeing as I was becoming bogged down at Uni. Some bike shops also helped out with a load of things:Blackman’s Bicycles in Penrith donated almost $700 worth of bicycle gear for me to take on my trip and Lifecycles Penrith helped enormously also.

Following a year of fund raising it was finally time to take off on our big trip. There were another 30 people from around Australia and NZ who also had the same insane idea that they could take on the Challenge. We all met in Ho Chi Minh City after a 9 hour journey that included sprinting through Singapore Airport to catch our connecting flight. After a night in Vietnam’s capital we headed off for a lightning-fast trip through the Cu Chi tunnels, a network of over 200 km of tunnels that played a vital part in the Vietnam War (they call it the American War). We were then fitted to our bikes and took off on the adventure of a lifetime. The first 5 days of cycling have become a blur, punctuated by watching a few people fall off their bikes in spectacular style, one smack bang in front of an Ambulance driving on the wrong side of the road. The Ambos didn’t seem to be too bothered (silly tourist). In fact, no one in Vietnam or Cambodia seemed to know how to be stressed out. Imagine driving a scooter with you, your spouse and two or three children squished on for good measure, weaving in and out of traffic that’s supposed to drive on the right hand side of the road, but sometimes decides that they might just try the left for a change. This was a phenomenon I ended up becoming quite familiar with, especially after almost having a head-on collision with a few motor vehicles (relative rarities) seconds after wondering why all of a sudden the motorbikes, push bikes and pedestrians in front of me had just scattered. I ended up becoming very familiar with how to swerve.

The absolute highlight of the cycling (aside from knowing that I was very much alive whenever gigantic semi-trailers roared by with their immensely loud horns sounding) was the amount of children that lined the side of the road just to see us. We were donned in lime-green Oxfam Challenge jerseys and rode mountain bikes that are very rare. Add to that the lycra that those of us who were brave enough wore (not me), and all together we looked absolutely ridiculous. I can just imagine what the older people sitting on the side of the road watching us were thinking; “Nuts, the lot of them. Honestly, they look rich enough, why don’t they take the air-conditioned bus? And what on earth are they wearing?” The kids, though, went absolutely berserk, screaming at us “HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO!” The even younger ones just screamed something that sounded like “OOOEOOOEOOOEOOO”, but we got the point. We’d also be faced with a row of hands, held out to high-5 as we cycled by. Some kids,though, decided that they’d try and knock us off our bikes by giving us the hardest high-5 they could muster. I became used to this and would slip my hand upwards and say “Na na na!” to which the other kids by the side of the road would intone “NA NA NA!!!” Some kids would even pick flowers to hand to us as we went by and we’d often come into rest-spots cradling wind-blown flowers that we’d treasure until all the petals came off and we had to let them go.

At one rest stop, I had the opportunity to go into a local English language school and speak to the students. This delighted the teacher, I suppose because, good as his English was, they had never spoken English to a real English-speaking person before. That was a bit of a shock, and I realised that us being there must be quite an event. The actual school was also quite a shock. It was a one-room shack no bigger than my kitchen, and I realised that these students must have a lot of dedication to learn what they had – which was a lot, considering – with highly limited resources. Leaving these kids to their study, I then found a group of young primary-school aged kids playing handstands and cartwheels in a grassed area. Having done gymnastics since I was 8, I decided that they should understand what a real handstand was, and gave a rather impromptu demonstration. I can’t be sure, but I think they were impressed, as they started chanting, clapping and cheering. Then another guy and I decided it would be fun to attach two kids, one on front and one behind to our shoulders by their hands – the exact technicalities I can’t remember, but it worked – and spin them around. I could only do it once, as the momentum kept us going for so long that when we finally stopped we all fell to theground in dizziness and fits of giggles.

Our fifth day of riding was hard. We substituted lovely tar roads for the most horrible dirt ones known to man, with the biggest pot holes and ditches imaginable and some sections being comprised purely of rocks the size of cricket balls piled up on each other. I thought more than once that perhaps it would be easier if we just tried to ride through a creek bed. But it was enormously fun (at least for those of us who didn’t fall off, but they said they had fun too). It was also along these roads that I had to slow down to a crawl while slapping the kid’s hands lest a two-year-old knock me over. One boy must have decided that I was going much to slow and took it upon himself to grab onto the back of my bike and push me forward while running behind. His job done, he gave my behind a solid ‘whack’, just as I had seen the kids do to the buffalo they herded. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing while the other kids also found it equally hilarious. I rode on to the sound of side-splitting laughter.

We cycled through various provinces, some more affluent than others, but the standard of living was all together very low, especially compared to what I am used to. We cycled along main roads with the houses nothing more than a square room built from tree branches and palm fronds. Most of the childre nmust only have one set of clothing or none at all because their clothes were so worn that sometimes you wondered how many hands it had been through to reach them. However, regardless of possessions, the kids seemed happy and bright, at least from what we saw. They absolutely loved playing with the bubbles a few of us brought along, with some kids being so enthralled it was like giving an Aussie kid an X-Box 360 with all the games ever produced. Plus a gigantic plasma TV to play it on. Then when it was time for us to move on, I’d hold my hand out to one kid and say “Bye bye”. It would take them a few seconds to realise I wanted to shake hands, but once the first one did, the kids practically dive-bombed on top of me just to touch my arm, screaming “BYEBYEBYEBYE!!!” I felt like a superstar, except that I was probably gaining more from the experience than them.

After learning a few words of Khmer (the official language of Cambodia), I would call out “Sua s’dai” (Khmer for Hello) to everyone I saw. One lady looked quite abashed, laughed a bit and replied with “Or kun”. I almost fell off my bike. She had just thanked me for saying hello to her. That’s what I discovered about the Cambodian people, they are so humble and so calm that I couldn’t help but fall in love with the once-tumultuous country and everyone in it.

So I was having the time of my life, when on day six I completed the day’s ride not feeling too well. By that night I had a pretty good idea why, and I still wholly and completely blame the mayonnaise in our (Western-style) picnic lunch. I spent the entire night in the bathroom and by 5am thought that I had perhaps not only emptied the contents of my stomach but had perhaps gotten rid of my stomach all together. In between moments of agony I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realised in horror that my belly button was practically stuck to my spinal cord. I could make out every rib and my hip bones were protruding so far I could have revised my skeletal anatomy. In hindsight, I should have taken a picture, but such thoughts don’t make it through your head when you think you’re about to pass out. The next morning sent me stumbling downstairs to meet the group where we would take a 2.5 hr bus ride to an Oxfam project operating in the Taeko province. However, after being convinced that I looked horrible and would probably look no better after standing in the sun all day in a province decidedly short of bathrooms, I made my decision to stay in bed. This I was enormously grateful for as, stumbling back upstairs, I emptied my stomach of the cordial I had sipped only 5 min earlier. Immediately assuaging any disappointment I felt for not accompanying the rest of the group, I slipped into bed and watched CNN for the whole day while slipping in and out of consciousness. It was great.

The following day, however, I was determined to see Phnom Penh. A group of us hired a tuk tuk for the day and made our way to the famous RussianMarkets. Bargaining was certainly a new experience and at first I disliked it. Later, however, I realised that it was really just a form of social interactionand I ended up having a lot of fun making ridiculously low offers for chess-sets and scarves. It would go something like this: “Hello Lady, you buy? You see something you like? You want look? Hello? Lady!” (And all this because you glanced at the shop from about five metres away. The actual bargaining went like this:) ME: “How much for the tie?” HER: “You like tie? Very good silk. $15US.” ME: “$15! Oh, never mind.” She then spots me eyeing some chopsticks. HER:“You like chopsticks? Very good ones. $25 US.” ME: “$25! No, that’s okay.”Storeholder: “How much you pay for 2 ties and chopsticks?” ME: “Actually I jus twanted – okay, fine…$1.” HER: “$1!?!? No! (then she starts laughing at me.)“No, no. $35.” ME: “That’s okay, I just wanted a tie.” Storeholder: “$30.” ME:“I really just want the-.” Storeholder: “$25!” You kind of get the picture,right? The thing was, I did really just want the tie. Just one, but ended upwith two ties and a whole lot of chopsticks that I didn’t really want in thefirst place but ended up being offered to me at such a low price I couldn’trefuse. So I left the shop a little bewildered at what had just happened but at least had a great bargaining trick up my sleeve; just try really hard to leave. Meeting up with the others for lunch I realised that my experience wasn’t exactly unique. “Well I went in for this,” one guy said as he held up a Cambodian all-purpose scarf, something that you can get for $1, “And ended upwith this,” and he held up an assortment of goods that could barely fit in his day pack, including chopsticks, t-shirts and more scarves than probably the woman selling them ever owned in her life.

We then took our tuk tuk to the Killing Fields, a rather sobering experience. From 1975 to 1979, the Communist movement called the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia. While in power, the Khmer Rouge murdered, worked or starved to death close to 1.7 million Cambodians, approximately one fifth of the entire population. The Killing Fields now open to the public is one of many sites that Cambodians by the truckload, men, women and children were brought to to be systematically slaughtered. It was also the site of many mass graves. We were still able to see teeth, bone and clothes from those who where murdered there. Following this, we ventured to S-21, a school-turned-prison where Cambodians were interrogated, tortured and murdered. This place was even more sobering due to its many graphic pictures displaying the horrible conditions in which prisoners were kept and killed. There’s not much to say to each other when you visit a place like that. We headed back to our hotel in silence.

The next morning we piled onto the bus and prepared for a 6 hr busride to Siem Reap. On the way we stopped at what has been coined ‘Spider Village’ by the tourists, due to the fried spiders the locals serve, although I’m sure the real name isn’t quite so mercantile. Two in our group decided that they would take on the local delicacy and the rest of us watched in disgust and fascination as each downed the large forest arachnid. Eugh.

Siem Reap saw us absolutely exhausted, as long, hot days of sitting there doing nothing usually do. Arriving at our hotel, however, we became instantly refreshed after being greeted with cool hand towels to wipe our faces– and bellboys! Absolute luxury! The next morning we all awoke at 4 am (4 am!) and rode our bikes through the town out to Angkor Wat complex where we watched the sunrise. We then cycled to various temples, my absolute favourite being Ta Prohm temple, where the structures were built around 1000 years ago, then lost 600 years ago. Subsequently, the jungle had decided to take back what was theirs in the first place, and the most gigantic trees I have ever seen were growing on top of crumbling buildings, with some root systems integrated intothe structures itself. Once I was able to escape the tourist throng (darn tourists!), I was able to enjoy this masterpiece of man and nature, and it was absolutely magnificent – ‘till I rounded the corner and was bombarded with local sales merchants pushing products in my face and beginning the whole “You buy lady? You buy?” I quickly backed up and fled in the opposite direction.

After Ta Prohm, I felt a little dizzy and light-headed, probably due to the early start and still not being completely well. But I hopped on the bike anyway, only to discover that there was a very good possibility of swerving into a truck, so I hopped into our support vehicle (a truck that I’mpositive would never be declared road-worthy in Australia)and promptly fell asleep. Arriving back at our hotel we had the rest of the dayfor shopping and general exploring, which I did with great zest, finding themassage places in town charging only $5 for a one hour massage. I was inheaven.

Our last day of cycling took us through beautiful country side surrounding Angkor Wat to the temple of Banteay Srei,a small, yet beautifully and intricately carved temple. It was a round trip and coming back all the children on the side of the road now only cried “BYEBYEBYEBYE!” which, we thought, was most fitting seeing as our adventure was almost over. Before hopping on the bus the following day, my morning was filled withmore massages, more shopping and, of course, more tuk tuk rides. It was with a heavy heart that we farewelled those of us who were staying behind for an extended holiday and piled onto the bus for the airport. I was feeling pretty good, health-wise, until the last leg of the flight when I think my general un-wellness combined horribly with travel sickness as the plane lurched and jumped coming into Sydney. I was therefore extraordinarily grateful to get off the plane and out of the airport. It was only 13 days, but we were a world away, and it was odd not to be greeted at the airport with a rush of “Tuk tuk Lady? You want tuk tuk?” Because, yes, at that moment, I really did want a tuk tuk.

It was hard being brought back into reality, with another $1000 that needed to be raised, but it was magically done before Christmas time, which is why I am now writing this abridged memoir.

Overall, the trip was a wonderful experience and has certainly whet my appetite for travel, especially to areas that don’t often get a lot of visitors. So to everyone who I chanced to meet, bump into or just generally come across on my trip, including our wonderful guides and fellow Challengers, I’d like to say “Or Kun” for making this Challenge a time of my life I’ll remember forever.