Cambodia

Hello Cambodia 🇰🇭👋

It's a strange feeling to be starting again in a new country. After a month in Vietnam (in which we finally started to feel acclimated to the language and culture), we started fresh again in a country that we knew nothing about with a language that felt foreign to me for the first time. With my previous travels, I always could navigate my way through things. Spanish, Italian, French, and Vietnamese all have Latin characters as the base. Chinese is also familiar to the point I can guess what things mean by looking at the characters. But Khmer is completely foreign to me. សួស្តី តើ អ្នក សុខ សប្បាយ ទេ!?! It felt like I was embarking on this trip again from square one. 🤣

We plan to bike from Phnom Penh -> Siem Reap -> Thai border. We take our time as usual and take it day by day to plan our routes and what we want to see.

Biking in Cambodia has had its fair share of ups and downs. We bike in mind-numbingly hot conditions (37C/100F) daily, either on the highway or not-so-well-maintained dirt roads. Cambodia is extremely flat. You'd think that would be ideal for biking, but it's quite the opposite (at least for me). Biking for me has always been synonymous with meditating. Usually, on long bike days, I would have a few spurts of 30 minutes to an hour of relaxing cycling where I'd think about a bunch of things. Life, relationships, future, dreams, etc. Usually, I'd come out of it feeling somewhat enlightened and satisfied. Then there'll be some kind of obstacle (a hill), so my mind would focus on that. When that task is complete, I'd feel accomplished, I'd have a good thought again, and then we'd repeat till we make the destination for the day.

In Cambodia, it's been too flat and “easy” that my so-called relaxing bike time to think turns into overthinking… On top of that, it's 40C and humid. I start to spiral downward some days 🥲. The toughest part mentally of the trip. I began to feel a bit burned out from traveling.

I regularly thought about how much I miss surfing or playing soccer or volleyball. During those times, my mind is totally in the present. Just anything to stop me from thinking, I wanted that so bad. When I arrive in Thailand, I'll give myself a one-week surf retreat 🤣. Being in the ocean is so liberating and free. I realized I miss that a lot.

Tough times aside, there are moments that I enjoy traveling by bike like this. There was one instance where we would go out at night in a random small town. We bike from our guesthouse to a small market. There, we would eat a meal served from metallic Croc pots, then bike next door to a stall selling shaved ice and fruits. Since it's so hot outside, we could take off our shirts while we eat, then bike back to our guest house in an empty street underneath a night sky full of stars. It's a rush, almost like a drug, to feel that sense of freedom and seem like you can do anything in the world. I guess that's the kind of high I'm chasing when I go on trips like these…

Anyways, we got to see some epic sights here. Angkor Wat was amazing! It was honestly one of the most amazing ruins I've seen in my life. Seeing so many temples did drain my energy though… As cool as it was, I like doing things more than sightseeing 😅.

I'm currently bedridden in Siem Reap. After a month of eating whatever I wanted, the final boss, Papaya Salad, finally gave my stomach the K.O. I was doing so well before this 🥲. I'm recovering well, and we will soon be biking again. This post will likely be the last post of Cambodia!! We will now head southwest where we will attempt to cross the Thai border to make it to Chanthaburi! 500km to Bangkok!!!

Let's go go go!!