Good morning SE Asia!: 14/12/2013

We managed to drag ourselves out of bed on time which was a surprise, and had a breakfast of drinks and snacks bought the day before as the hotel did not do breakfast, and we wanted to get to the border early before the rush started. Of course we could have nipped out to a local place for a bowl of Pho and a glass of hot green tea, but that still doesn't grab us first thing in the morning to be honest. Our Western palate demands something sweeter, and caffeine at a minimum. The noodle soups start to become interesting only at about 10am when you feel properly awake.

Once packed up and on the bikes we headed onto the main road, pointed ourselves due West and headed for Cambodia. The road was fine, rough tarmac like usual but a lot of local traffic obviously heading for Cambodia and also coming back loaded with cheap stuff. The faces seemed to be changing also, we saw a darker skin and rounder flatter faces with thicker lips and also several short stocky and round persons which was not common for Vietnam at all. We reached the border managing to not feel too rough from the previous night and the temperature had not become to hot either yet.

We were a little nervous about the border crossing, only because this is the first time we have done this in Asia and were not sure what to expect and maybe they even wanted to search the bikes and luggage for drugs or ask us to pay import taxes for the bikes or show the receipt for the bikes or most likely just try to get more cash out of us in some way. The first stop was a little hut where the guy checked the passports and let us proceed to the main gate with a smile. In there it was quite empty so we did come at the right time of day. We spoke to a security guy about parking the bikes (we had been told to park out of sight so that they did not see them and would not ask for any extra money), and parked them where we could see them through the window to keep an eye on them but by now I already felt that this was a professional operation and we were safe from opportunists. They stamped our Vietnam Visas as expired which seemed to take a while behind the tinted glass counters and let us proceed through to No-Mans-Land and on to the Cambodian checkpoint.

The Cambodian side was markedly worse in terms of facilities! The problems seems to be that they have torn up all the roads on this side as part of a huge Casino and Hotel complex, which has since shut down due to lack of interest, which means the roads project has also stalled. You first have to get a form for entry which is filled out with all of your details (ALL of them), then you take this to another ramshackle hut where they check and issue the Visa but not before you take another form back to the first office for the Departure details (fill in exactly same details as first time on a different sheet). Then pay for the visa which we know should cost $20 but that they would charge us $25 to get a little extra for their pocket. Instead of standing and arguing in the heat (and in case they gave us it for $20 then asked for details of the bikes or something to be difficult) we just paid it. They then try to squeeze a little more money out of the traveller by trying to perform a medical check in another little hut next door and charging another $2 for shining a torch in your eyes and taking your temperature. We didn’t want this so waved our immunisation cards from our jabs at home at him he wasn't happy about missing out on his dollars so made us fill in yet another form with the same details. Then, finally more than one hour later we were off into Cambodia!

We had decided to head up towards Phnom Penh and then on towards Siam Reap (Angkor Wat) instead of sticking to the coast and following the beaches.

The roads continued to be very bad, dusty as hell and so potholed from all of the border traffic on the uncovered surface that it was very slow going. We hoped that as soon as we got farther away from the actual border it would improve.

It did improve, albeit very briefly. There was a stretch of maybe 5km of the original 1.5 lane wide highway still intact with passable tarmac. It was a nice sunny but not too hot day. We remarked about how we could already tell that this was a much poorer country, the houses were again just shacks or stilted shacks, many more people road past on older motorcycles or bicycles. The feeling was friendly though not as much as Vietnam. Apparently there is a law enforced since 2008 that forbids people to be unfriendly to tourists. Certainly all of the very little children have been trained to wave and shout hello in their little cartoon squeaky voices, even though they seem far too young to understand why they are doing it. We compared the standard of living with something like the smaller villages and agricultural lifestyle of the very North of Vietnam, but the people seemed to look a little more forlorn, lost even. There were fewer hello's from young guys, some would just stare even when we waved. I don't think it was aggression of any kind, more a shyness or unwillingness to appear happy. Poor old Cambodia has had a bit of a time though. We stopped for a couple of cokes in a little hut/shack/shop with three young guys and one tiny woman who had the shrillest, yappiest, most painfully loud voice ever. She didn’t so much talk as scream in your face. In a nice way of course but not something you want with a hangover like we had. Even the 3 guys seem to tilt their head away from her and wince as she let another staccato sentence out with all the ferocity of a tiny sub machine gun. We paid them in dong and even learned our first few words of Cambodian.

We ploughed on, now starting to feel the effects of the late night and litres of cheap beer. We had not covered many km's due to the border crossing. Then all of a sudden the road surface disappeared. They are widening the road by flattening all the trees/houses/ fields each side by 2m, then raising the level to match the current road and then tarmacing the lot. Now, it would seem sensible to me that you should perhaps do the widening part first, then lay the bedrock on the raised sections and flatten it and perhaps even tarmac one side before removing the old surface, so that the road remains usable. What they have done instead is initiate the process by removing the old surface entirely and then dumping the hardcore gravel layer straight onto it. This leaves a road surface much like a pebbly desert, with inch deep layers of 3cm diameter rocks covering a bed of dessicated red dust. It was almost impossible to cycle on and most of the time we barely made 10kph for fear of falling off when your front wheel digs in to another pothole filled with gravel. These were by far the worst road surfaces we have ever cycled on. We ploughed on getting dustier and sweatier and dustier again. The hangovers did nothing for our motivation and it started to get quite tough. We knew we would make it of course but as a first day into Cambodia, we kind of wished it was over already.