Sunday, January 25, 2009

Le Cambodge, capitale mondiale du monde en pyjama..

Ah bonjour a vous tous,

Nous sommes a Phnom Penh, la capitale du Cambodge et on va bien. Le soleil tape fort ici et si le bronzage de cycliste se maintient, je vais faire serieusement rire de moi dans quelques jours, lorsque je vais aller m'amuser dans l'eau sur la cote Vietnamienne. On est presque rendus a 6000km maintenant c'est difficile d'arreter plus que 3 jours de suite parce que notre systeme est completement a besoin de sa ration quotidienne de coups de pedale. Je sais pas ce que je vais faire dans la sloch Montrealaise en revenant mais c'est le dernier de mes soucis pour l'instant.

Notre croisiere de 8 heures sur le Tonle Sap (un gros lac dans lequel le Mekong et une autre riviere se jettent) nous a fait decouvrir un autre monde; les villages flottants. Et c'est comique de voir la vie s'activer sur l'eau. Les ecoliers ont des petits canots pour se rendre a l'ecole, il y a meme une coure de recreation grillagee et les petits cambodgiens jouent au soccer comme des deschaines sans que le ballon se retrouve dans l'eau. Il y a aussi l'hopital flottant, la station service, le magasin, la porcherie (!!) flottante, c'est vraiment incroyable. L'eau est pleine de poissons, c'est ici que le pays puise 80% de son apport en proteines. J'en boirait pas une tasse part contre; lorsqu'on s'est arrete pour une pause-toilette dans le resto flottant, heu bien pas besoin de vous faire de dessin ou le pipi dore va..Desolee de detruire vos illusions de champ d'epuration elabore! Et les gens boivent l'eau du lac, evidemment. Il y a beaucoup de vegetation autour et sur le lac et on a vu des beaux oiseaux. Rendus de l'autre cote du lac, on a repris nos becanes apres une bonne nuit de sommeil pour se diriger vers Phnom Penh. On boit du jus de canne a sucre presse sur le bord de la route, un vrai drink de cycliste, pas mal meilleur que du Gatorade vert.

Ah les beautes de l'Asie..

Le Cambodge a quand meme sa particularite compare aux autres pays qu'on a visite; les femmes et les enfants (pas tous, mais quand meme une bonne gagne) se promenent en pyjama n'importe quand n'importe ou!Desfois avec des talons!??

On a rencontre encore plus de cyclistes, dont 2 quebecois qui avaient une ferme bio et qui ont tout vendu pour partir en tandem a travers le monde. Ils ont une fille qui me ressemble.

Demain on part en direction du Vietnam, on va s'amuser dans le delta du Mekong.
A bientot.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Laos-Cambodia (and a shortcut through Thailand)!

The beauty of this trip resides in the freedom of riding a bicycle and being able to change plans when we feel like it. First of all, we were convinced we would not have enough time to come to Cambodia and second, the idea of paying a little visit to the Thais had not even crossed our minds before. But here we are, in Siem Reap Cambodia, very happy about our decision...

We had a rest from the hills in Southern Laos, it was flat but also windy. The road we took followed the mighty Mekong but we were, for most of the time, always a few kilometers away from the river and saw more dry rice fields than anything. Vientiane was fun place to stop; we visited the war museum and met up again with some other cyclists we had met in the North of the country. For those of you who think we are away for a long time, we were the poor ones with the shortest trip and all the others had the pleasure to cycle from 6 months to 5 years!They are a great bunch and I find it's always a pleasure to listen to their stories. More travel ideas for the years to come! We also came very close to participate in a cycling event in Vientiane, a bicycle race with mountain, road and timetrial categories. And for both men and women! I would have tried my best but we were out of time on our visa so we did not participate.There is an interesting building in the city called Patouxay, which is inspired by the Arc de Triomphe, and it is made with concrete that was originally donated by the USA to build a runway for the airport(!). It's the place where the cycling race started\ended. It's funny to see all those very strange colonial references.

We had a good time in Laos; the people are just very friendly and the countryside offers superb scenery. We crossed over to Thailand as our visa was running out and with a day where we got lost ( yes, we did manage to do that in a country that has just about a handful of roads!) we decided to take a shortcut to reach Siem Reap, in the North west of Cambodia.

We only spent 2 nights in Thailand, but that was just enough to have a taste of the country's world class roads and of the delicious Thai food. I'll have to go back there one day.

The day we crossed to Cambodia was very strange. There is a filthy rich casino resort on the Cambodian side and then a few hundred meters of pavement and BANG, dirt roads! Mentally prepared for the famously destroyed cambodian road network, we went through the first 120km of dirt road without much trouble other than being covered with dust at the end of the day. Then we reached one of the country's main road to reach Siem Reap and that was more of a cowboy experience. A good section of it was just very bumpy and dusty roadwork. It seemed to have been like this for a good while; the government perhaps just does not have the money or is too corrupted to finish the roads properly. So I arrived in Siem Reap, home of the famous Angkor temples, just covered with a thick layer of dust that accumulated over my layers of sunscreen.I was surprised the guesthouse accepted us, we were just so dirty.

The countryside in Cambodia is beautiful but also very heavily mined (land mines) .. The old people also speak French very well, we spoke french 4 times in the first 2 days in some very remote places, that was odd!

Jean bought an hard boiled egg with a foetus inside, even if he was very hungry he did not eat it..

We'll take a boat tomorrow to cross the Tonle Sap, a huge lake full of fish, birds and crocodiles!
A la prochaine
Have a good minus 30 degrees!

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Northern Laos to Vientiane

Happy New Year everyone!
We are writing from Vientiane, the first capital city we have visited so far...

From Luang Namtha, we cycled through very nice mountains and managed to climb devilish hills. The gradient of the road here is not as gentle as in China and we had our share of 20 % climbs. Laos is not very populous, nor particularly rich, we did not come across many guesthouses or restaurants in the 500km loop we did in the mountains. So we sometimes had to cycle long days in a hilly terrain and carry enough food to keep going throughout the day. We ate sticky rice by the kilo! That was the best cyclist food we could get a hold on. I have to admit that this region of the world is a real paradise for cyclists who like serious climbs and mindblowing descents, in a fantastic scenery without much cars. The people are also very enthusiastic about seeing cyclist falangs (strangers) and children rush towards us shouting "sabai di" as we cycle through their villages, often a handful of bamboo huts with farm animals running around.

It is one of Asia's poorest country and children, especially, are not always healthy-looking, mostly from food deprivation. The mountains offer little space to grow anything and they can seldom rely on fishing for protein. Often, children would use slingshots to kill wild birds or wander around in the woods to grab anything crawling on the ground. Thay also have no toys, a couple of times, I made a distribution of colorful origami birds, it's easy to make and doesn't take much space in my luggage. And the children looked very pleased.

Laos has very interesting sights, the Plain of Jars being one of them. Located in Phonsavan, this site is very misterious, huge granite jars have been carved in the middle of nowhere and their use has not been quite understood yet. Some archeologists think they were used as burrial containers, some other believe it was used to make rice wine (!). Going down south towards Vientiane, we stopped in Vang Vieng, a very weird touristic place where young foreiners get hammered while drifting on the river on tubes. They also sip down marijuana shakes while watching numerous episodes of Friends, looking like brainwashed zoombies. It was a pityful sight.

The markets, on the other hand, were absolutely surprising, we saw things there that we never thought of eating.
-baby birds
-flying squirrels
-water rats
-dried rats
-white worms
-bats
-eggs with embryos
-cat stew

I was too effraid to get overweight so I did try any of them. My brother Alexis however, would certainly be delighted to try them all.

We are now half way through this whole bicycle adventure, here are some numbers:
4200km cycled
43 days of cycling

Tire punctures:
Jean:4
Francoise:0

Falls:
Jean:1
Francoise:1
(with minor scratch and cuts)

Longest day: 140km in the mountains (8 hours on the saddle)
Shortest day: 32km (3 hours in rain and steep climbs, we called it a day)

We have decided to follow the mighty Mekong down to Cambodia and visit its southern Vietnamese delta before going back up north. So far, cycling has been a lot of good fun and we don't envy backpackers at all! I think we are now condemned to travel this way for the rest of our lives! Which feels great!

Speak to you next time!