Ferries and phalluses

Holiday is over. We have to return to Phnom Penh to extend our visa.
Of course we don't take the same route as coming here, but cycle via the more westerly road, with number four.
Again we encounter one Hummer after the other, very peculiar in a poor country like this. The difference between the rich and the poor seems even bigger than in India; we suspect corruption runs off every scale here.
The landscape isn't a source of joy; forests are cut everywhere and turned into charcoal and timber. The remaining shrubs are slashed and burned to make way for agriculture.
The ladies do cheer us up though. Did we think the Thai fashion for ladies only moderately feminine, in Cambodia the women really try to look as unattractive as possible. Most of them are dressed in oversized pyjamas with Mickey Mouse or bear prints toddlers in the Netherlands would be ashamed of to be seen with in public. The women are friendly and always smile at us. And that's something you can't always accuse the Dutch toddler of.
Just before the western Elephant Mountains a tropical cloudburst surprises us, and nicely cools us and the air down.
In Bungalow park Picnic, four kilometres further, not a single drop has fallen and the staff doesn't understand why we're soaked. The park lies halfway a hilltop and offers beautiful views over the savannah-like surroundings. As if we're back in Africa, only the zebras and gazelles have been replaced by waterbuffalos with cow bells.
Our small bungalow houses not just us, but also offers lodging to a family of mice living in the bathroom wall, two geckos calling out their species' name quite regularly and a lifelike stone frog somebody for some reason placed on the coat rack. When I hang my clothes there, I see to my astonishment that the frog's throat is moving up and down.

Oops, it's alive.
It also starts walking now, that is to say: it sticks its suction pads to the wall and walks against all rules of gravity straight up the wall. It is the so-called bungalow-frog, also named tree-frog. Beige-white belly, salmon-pink back and legs dotted with grey spots. Unfortunately we're not allowed to pick the marvelous animal up, because that would most probably be rewarded with a squirt of poison right into our eyes.

The road to Kampong Speu leads via a long climb to the Pich Nil Pass, where the shoulders are filled with hundreds of spirit houses, which the car drivers stack with bananas and incense. The houses are honouring the deity Ya-Mao. There are several legends concerning this goddess. The most colourful is the following: long ago Ya-Mao was the wife of a village-chief . The man had to go for work to a far away region for a longer period of time, so they didn't see each other for months. After a while she longed so much for him, and his phallus, that she decided to pay him a visit. The ferryboat carrying her encountered a heavy storm and sank. Everybody drowned, including Ya-Mao: she would never see her husband, or his pleasure rod, again.
But her spirit was strong and via dreams and her spiritual powers she let the people of this coastal region know she would forever guard them, and protect the fishermen and the people. The only thing she wanted in return was for people to show good behaviour and offer a phallus symbol once in a while.
From that moment on banana stalls on top of the Pich Nil Pass have had a thriving business.

The more we near the capital, the more construction sites we pass. The city has big plans. On the road the traffic is busy, especially with trucks carrying firewood and timber. The remorque-moto's, motorcycles with a long trailer, are also stacked high with the precious wood. Another year and there is no tree left in Cambodia.

After three days we've had it with Phnom Penh, and with a fresh month worth of visa in our passport we're on our way to the undiscovered east of Cambodia.
On the map we found a nice and small road on the other side of the Mekong, alongside the river, running north. We let ourselves transport to the other side by a ramshackle ferry, loaded with motorcycles, ice-cream-carts and handcarts. The ferry doesn't sink, something we always read about in the newspapers in the Netherlands, so those stories must have been overdone.

The first kilometres over the unpaved path look promising for the rest of the day. Left and right of the gravel road, between waving palm trees loaded with coconuts, every spot is filled with traditional stilt-houses; once in a while we catch a glimpse of the Mekong. The major part of the traffic consists of oxen-carts, horse and carriages and light motorcycles.

The local people, not being used to tourists, look at us and don't believe their eyes. After a while the wide road turns into a narrow path that suddenly disappears into the jungle and dissolves into nothingness. Half a kilometre back there was a tiny turn-off which turns out to be the main road. A kilometre or two further we are suddenly standing at a tributary of the Mekong and the path stops again. Same story.
And so it goes on for dozens of kilometres, search, back, choose another sidetrack and hope this is the right way.

The small red road on the map in reality is a labyrinth of paths and if you don't know the way you have a minor problem.
But it is very beautiful. Absolutely the most beautiful route we've cycled in Cambodia. And the hardest; after one hundred kilometres of bouncing and bumping, sand ploughing and playing tracker, we arrive in Kompong Cham, in the dusk. Dirty, exhausted and very fulfilled.

"I've done that a couple of years ago by motorbike, and it took me nearly ten hours. So I warn you, it is sandy, and very difficult to cycle!"
Joe, the English owner of the Mekong Restaurant, who very much reminds us of Basil of Fawlty Towers, strongly advises against taking the road from
Mondulkiri to Banlung in Rattanakiri. Not only is the condition of the road very bad, there isn't a lot to see either.
We decide to cycle to Kratie first and look there whether we will visit the northern province of Rattanakiri from there.
The eastern road, right next to the Vietnamese border, is depressing: sooty black fields, felled and burned trees, the sour smell of drying cassava and in between long stretches of rubber plantations. The nicest moments in three days working our butts off against a strong headwind are the fried frogs, the local cyclists with impossible loads and meeting Cor and Jose from Egmond, who for the last fifteen years have been cycling somewhere around the world for three months every winter.

In Kratie we talk to Martin of the Star Guesthouse, who has been living here for the last twelve years. He has the same negative travel advice as Joe from Kompong Cham: in the east and north the roads are hard to find; even with GPS people get lost. There is a lot of sand, no water and you have to carry your own food. Apart from this there is a distinct chance of getting robbed or taking your last step, on an old landmine.
No, then we'd rather get on a rickety ferry and take our chances that way.