17/4/25
We slept in a modicum later than usual. We chatted to the Vietnamese French man in the morning. He was going south an unimaginable 130km to Kratie. First we went into the city to find some more dollars. The first bank didn’t have any. The number of bank guards that appeared was a little surprising. We didn’t have any nuts or dried fruit so we bought peanuts. Some jackfruit too. The mood felt different to us. The people seemed a little angry. Perhaps it was the post holiday blues. Perhaps a lack of sleep from their partying.
National Road 7 was a start contrast to the 64. It was a freshly sealed tarmac road. It had clearly been sprayed. The modern method that leaves the road irritatingly bumpy. It was most notable for the complete lack of settlements. There didn’t seem to be any of the small shops and houses that were normally clustered along any kind of surfaced road.
Soon enough we happened upon Samaki and our inner peace was restored. As we passed, through the slowed down village life, a child or two shouted hello and settlements appeared. It was just the city. Cities make people into dicks. The density increased. There was a group of children sitting on some stairs, it was like a nest of baby birds tweeting to us.
There are multiple types of registration plate in Cambodia. Normal white ones. Green ones that say ‘state’. And police. The latter has a red box round it and clearly says police. The luxury police SUVs seem to only travel in convoys. We stopped to eat some of our jackfruit by a small shelter outside a temple gate. There was no visible pagoda. A couple of kilometres on we stopped to buy some coffee. A dog started barking and a young boy made to hit the poor thing with a water bottle. We had to tell him not to. There was no also coffee. The stall next door was selling a whole cow‘s head. Still with the rope in its mouth. We fucking hate cruelty to all animals.
The next time we stopped coffee was available. We had to wait a little while though. The woman was serving food. Interestingly, she couldn’t read the word ‘black’ and had to ask her friend/owner. We didn’t want the customary condensed milk.
National Road 7 continued to follow the Mekong north. We weren’t right next to it. We couldn’t see it. But it was over to our west. The road had recently been resurfaced according to a sign. A loan from the World Bank had facilitated it. It wasn’t a particularly thrilling landscape. Fields and orchards peppered with shacks. There was a big power line on pylons to our east that eventually crossed over the road. We thought it would be really busy but the road was unimaginably quiet. We naively assumed it would be heaving with trade between Cambodia and Laos. But there was nothing of the sort. The odd international bus. Some scooters. But there were no lorries going back and forwards this way.
We reached the last town before the border. Outside a ‘gold shop’ there was a big crate of mangoes. We bought a kilo. The road turned sharply left and then ran parallel with the border with Laos. There was no fence. Laos was a mere 50m away from us.
We stopped one last time to hide the majority of our dollars. We’d heard the border guards could be a little corrupt. After another 2km we rounded a corner and looked upon the crossing. It looked deserted. We went underneath the first barrier, a guard in the hut pointed us towards temple like buildings.
We had to get stamped out first. Fingerprints and a photo. We’d been in Cambodia only two weeks in the end. Another barrier ducked to enter no man’s land. Then another to enter Laos. A sleeker more modern building. The first person we saw was a Laotian woman flogging SIM cards. She was wearing a white sports coat and had braided hair.
She also served as some kind of unofficial guide to the process. She stood around telling us how to fill out the forms. Then took us into a booth, with a guard, to have a passport photo taken. A mobile phone and a tiny digital printer. We figured she must be the guards wife. A dollar each for a photo and a SIM card for $8. It was cheaper than an eSIM.
The visa was $40 each. What we were expecting. We handed over our dollars. But the guard beckoned us back and showed us one of the notes. Damn. The currency exchanger had ripped us off. It was torn. Unacceptable. We had to fork over one our pristine $100 bills. We now had a useless $20. A few minutes later we went to hole 2 to collect our ‘visa on arrival’.
The corrupt guard asked us for $2 each. We told him we didn’t have any dollars that weren’t torn. Part of the scam is they make you wait around, scary if your bus is waiting for you, not so effective when we’re the only ones there. He basically told us to go away. Hilarious.
National Road 13 leads out from the border. It was radically different. It was deliciously smooth tarmac. We were rolling wonderfully compared to the road in Cambodia. But it also lacked any road markings. We assumed the loan from the World Bank would have also ‘improved’ this side, to improve trade. Maybe the Cambodian side had originally just been gravel.
After a couple of kilometres we turned off and took the road to Don Sadam. As we crossed the bridge we caught our first glimpse of the area known as Si Phan Don, or 4000 islands. We could see many of the local people swimming in the river. Only by the edge. The currents looked strong. We followed the road towards where the ferry was marked on the map. Both openstreetmap and google. This resulted in us taking a gravel track into a village. We almost got soaked by the children but they took mercy on us and just painted us with baby powder instead. We got to the end of the road but couldn’t see a ferry dock. A monk appeared and gestured for us to go along the track further north. Annoying. It was hard to cycle in some places. And impossible in others.
We asked some boys on a scooter. One of them asked his two friends to get off and then patiently escorted us up the track. A huge perfect power station stood at the top. It looked pristine. It had to be built by China. The map showed a large dam. From the top of the hydroelectric outlets we could see the currents were strong. Taking a boat across would be harder. The boy pointed down to a little makeshift dock. We thanked him profusely.
When we arrived at the boat a dump truck full of rocks had just driven on, and it had started to leave. The boat didn’t look like it should have been able to take the weight. Deflated, we got ready to wait. But we hadn’t seen the man in the corner. The ‘boat’ was two canoes strapped together with pallet wood to make a wide base. We wheeled our bikes on easily. He took us across, bemused when we took photos. It cost 40000 Kip. That’s about $2. All we had in change from the border transactions.
We had to walk/ride on more rocky gravel track on the other side. We came out at a river, and the sad remains of a washed away bridge. There were a surprising number of locals coming across. Some were daring it through the water. Some used the makeshift ferry that had been setup. It was the same kind of boat but the operator just used a piece of rope to pull us across. We negotiated to pay the $1 in Rial.
On the other side, up a steep track, we found the concreted over railway line that had laid the foundations for the popularity of the area. The French colonists had built the railway to navigate around the waterfalls that impeded their ability to use the river for trade. We rode south along the smooth surface. At the end of the line, in a little village, was an old rusted steam engine. The place was touristed. Mainly local people from what we could tell but there was a smattering of westerners.
We went to the only guesthouse on this side of the island called Pomelo. The man hesitated a lot, then told us the owner was in Thailand. He invited us to see a room, but there were already people staying in it. His friends it looked like. We declined. We didn’t understand the situation at all. We rode back north, up the perfectly concreted road, towards the main village of Khon. We knew there was an abundance of places to stay there.
We’d completely run out of water. Our thirst was becoming unwieldy. At the first cafe we saw we bought a big bottle of water as well as two bottles of soya milk. It also enabled us to get some more Kip. After we’d looked online we found a fancy guesthouse that was $30 a night and rode there. It had a big balcony and hammocks that overlooked the Mekong.
For dinner we walked into town and found a restaurant that made us two curries without meat or fish sauce. And a papaya salad. We were really exhausted. It was a bit perplexing why the last 5 days had managed to run us down so much. It was probably the fact that three of them had been over 50 miles.
As we were nibbling some fruit and nuts, and watching Bosch Legacy, we heard a knock. The man told us to bring our bags in from our bikes. He feared something might happen to them with all the drinking that was going on. We weren’t worried. We hadn’t had an issue so far. Sleep came easily. Initially anyway.
Surly They Won't Make It 