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Mar 04 - On the road to Ratankiri - We woke up, slightly recovered from the four days in the jungle. Had a breakfast of bread and jam, which was absolutely delicious after days and days of noodle soup. Tree was running around the guesthouse grounds like a headless chicken, and we gathered that he hadn't been able to get hold of our moto driver yet. After breakfast, though, he bounded up with a smile on his face. "No problem! On his way now."
[PS, as an aside, I'm writing this blog squished into a minibus with 12 people on the way to Stung Treng, and then onto Laos. I hope it's now at full capacity, but you never know.]
When the driver turned up, we saw that he was the same guy who'd guided the girls from Gloucester. He was a lot of fun, and his name was Baung. Tree had warned us that he walked and talked with his head cocked uncomfortably at about 60 degrees, but not to be perturbed. The motos were two little 125 cc Honda Dreams, that looked as though they'd had a seriously hard life already. Any extraneous bit (farings, unecessary gear pedals, etc. had fallen off and never been replaced). "No problem!" said Tree. I got the feeling he'd had a lot of practice with this particular expression. Our backpacks were tied on with rubber strips, just behind us, and daypacks, spares, and huge cooking oil bottles filled with petrol were strapped in front of the drivers. We wedged ourselves on (this configuration made for a pretty cosy sandwich!), waved goodbaye to Tree and set off.
I was strapped behind Baung, and Cheryl behind his mate, whose name we've both forgotten. I could immediately see the benefits of Baung's crick-necked driving position, as it gave me a pretty clear view of the road ahead, which was a new and unique expeience on the back of a moto. Our first stop was only a kilometer or so up the road where We pulled in at a roadside stall to pick up a few provisions for the trip. The stall-keeper must have been all of 10 or 11 years' old, if that. He took his job really seriously, though and haggled ferociously with our drivers, who were obviously trying to keep from laughing. We bought some more fuel, water and biscuits, and Cheryl and I got fitted out with a pair of seriously fetching Hello Kitty dusk masks! We squeezed back onto our bikes, which was kind of like assuming an enforced Spoon position with our drivers, and set of for the (theoretically) 8-hour journey to Ban Lung in Ratanakiri, some 270km.
How can we describe the road? 'Not great' would probably be a good start! The track was dust & dirt all the way, with ruts running across is at all angles. Most of the traffic is down to motos, so our drivers tended to follow the paths that other bikes had made - a sort of meandering wobble from left to right, avoiding the worst of the stones and crennelations in the road. It's hard to believe that this stretch is actually the main road linking two provincial capitals, and that apparently it was smooth, graded and straight in the days before the war & revolution. The road passed through some stretches of very pretty, hilly jungle, and also through the chopped out blocks of cleared land that we were sadly becoming used to in Cambodia. Every few kilometers, we'd pass a dusty village or two, and the kids would come rushing out to wave at the parangs going past. Although the country's had a huge population explosion, there wasn't much evidence of it here, apart from the logging activity, which is pretty pervasive. So we carried on up and down the bouncy roads with our drivers, trying to maintain and upright position - particularly difficult on the downhills, when the seat configuration encouraged you to slip forward into a sort of collapsed slump! After two-and-a-half hours of this, we pulled into a little hamlet called Koh Nek. "OK!" shouted Baung, jumping off, "now the good road finished. 40km now, very, very bad, to Lumphat. But first, lunch!"
[New update as I'm writing - they've just squashed in another person, making it 13 in an eight seater. Cosy!]
So we ate lunch in Lumphat, which was surprisingly good. Pork with rice & noodles, and all costing about $3 for us and our drivers combined. We stretched a bit, took in a deep breath, and got back on the Hondas for the 'bad road'. Now that we were travelling more slowly, Baung kept up an incessasnt chatter, talking about himself, his family, and the joys of being a moto driver. He was particularly incensed with guest house owners taking huge comissions and beating them down on price! "Wooohoooo," he said, as we bounced over a particularly steep gully, with a spine-jarring crash. "You pretty heavy, hey! How much do you weigh?" "About eighty-five," I replied, teeth clenched to try and prevent them from flying out at we ramped another improvised bridge. "Wow! I'm seventy-eight," he said, " probably better if your wife go with me, and you go with my friend. He's only fifty-five!"
I don't remember how long it was after he said this, probably only fifteen minutes, when there was a loud snap from the left hand side of the bike. "Oh no. Problem," he said, as he pulled off onto the side of the road in the middle of, literally, nowhere. "Did you say 'No problem'?," I asked halfheartedly. "No, no. I say problem. Big problem," he replied, still smiling as I looked down. The left shock absorber on the back wheel had sheared off completely. "Hee hee," he laughed. "I told you we too fat! You wait here, I go and find a part." So he dumped all the luggage and extra fuel on the side of the road, and disappeared into the dust, singing happily and using his left foot to support the bike, kind of like a kid riding a scooter.
I was standing there waiting in the sun for a bit. I thought I probably had enough water to last a day, so wasn't unduly worried, but Cheryl had gone ahead with the other driver, and I suddenly realised we hadn't made any plans for what to do in the case of breakdown. The drivers were maintaining a decent distance to avoid each others' dust, so I wasn't sure when they'd notice we weren't behind them anymore. I tried to call Cheryl's phone, but she was out of range, and then Baung came back, brandishing a shock-absorber in his left hand. It wasn't an exact match for the right one, but looked like it would do the trick. He didn't have a phone on him, or the other driver's number, but seemed to think they'd just stop and wait for us. It took forty minutes to change the shock; with much cursing, banging of spanners and general bits of roadside maintenance, and we finally got the shock fitted and (sort of) working. We took off, having lost about an hour - maybe a bit more; I was just thanking my lucky stars that everyone in Cambodia drives the same bike, and so spares are plentiful, and can even be found where there doesn't seem to be a village in sight.
[Okay - you won't believe this, in addition to the 13 passengers, we are now towing a broken down Toyota Camry, with eight people inside, and three large suitcases strapped to the roof!]
About 15 minutes later, we met up with CHeryl. She and her driver (despite having no language in common) had decided to come back and look for us. After that, it was time for the fatties to be separated. It had been beautiful, but was destined not to last. In a slightly cruel twist of fate, Cheryl got relegated to the bike with the dodgy shock, and the fat driver, and I was upgraded to a more comforatable seat, with extra leg- and butt-room. We carried on towards Lumphat, keeping a closer distance this time. The driver was right that this road was bad. It was more a set of intertwined paths than a proper road, sometimes almost flat, sometime five or six wnding goat tracks through a large sandpit. The road also wound through five or six dry riverbeds - the banks were pretty steep, and would even be tricky for a 4x4. In the wet season, it's completely impassable, and even today (with not a cloud in sight) we'd only seen two or three motos on the middle 200km stretch of the journey.
After a couple of hours, crawling along at just over walking pace, we came to a little nameless settlement at a fork in the road. We stopped at a sugar cane stand for a glass of sugar cane and orange juice, with ice - and it was the most delicious and refreshing thing that either of us had ever tasted, and it was quite a relief to take off our dust masks, which had turned a sort of reddy-brown over the course of the day. Baung grabbed the cleaver that the stall-owner had just used to halve the oranges, and proceeded to operate on his shoes, which were apparently too tight for him. He sliced open the backs to give himself a bit more breathing space! We mounted up again and set off into Ratanakiri - the Mondulkiri border was indicated by a dusty plank on the side of the road.
We finally arrived at the ferry, the only way to cross one of the main rivers running through Ratanakiri (I think it was actually the Stung Treng). Our drivers freewheeled down the jetty, and onto the ferry itself, which was actually just two canoes lashed together, with a few planks on top, and an 8hp Honda motor attached. The trip took about five minutes, and then we were across, and onto the verges of Lumphat, where the roads were once again relatively flat and even. Two more hours of comparatively easy riding took us into the surrounds on Ban Lung, which is not the prettiest town in the world, but is the capital of Ratanakiri, where we planned to stay for the next few days.
Our drivers persuaded us to stay at a place called the Tribal Hotel, which they said was great for tourists. We later found out that they also provided free rooms to the moto drivers of prospective clients for a night - not that we were complaining, because the place was actually really good. Like every other hotel in Cambodia, the furniture was all solid hardwood. We checked into our room, came downstairs to the restaurant for a great dinner, and hit the sack. The bed was seriously lumpy, but we barely noticed, as we disappeared off into a dreamless sleep.
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