Mekong maddness and beyond!

Hi all-
So much has happened in the last several days I can hardly recall it all, but we'll do our best. First we rode the (extremely) rural route from Kratie to Kampong Cham along the Mekong, then we saw a temple complex near Kampong Thom, and today was spend visiting Anchor Wat and the myriad of surrounding temples.

Total biking distance so far.... about 1100 miles.

Kratie to Kampong Cham
This was one of the coolest rides, and possibly even days traveling, that we have ever had. Leaving Kratie, we knew there was a long day ahead of us, as we heard the road south following the river was dirt and very rural. In reality, the road quality ranged from dirt to mud-pit. Many different things culminated on this ride to make it an unforgettable day- from scenery, to people and their culture, and a fun bike ride to boot.

About 2 hours into the ride, we hit the first of a series of Muslim villages. Ringing out over the jungle and little town a call to prayer could be heard (we're assuming that's what it was, never having actually heard one before), and many people congregating in several spots in town. We didn't see the praying, so maybe we weren't there at exactly the right time. These muslim villages were very interesting to ride through, as their culture is very different from the Buddhist villages found everywhere else. I'll break things up into several categories-

The Reactions
What planet did you come from? We get this sometimes from kids, classified by the unblinking stare as we go bye.
How you doin? Not surprisingly, we get a lot of attention from girls, especially teenagers.
The laugh. Sometimes people just laugh at us, kids and grown ups. I think we must look funny.
The knowing elder. Old men and women will greet us with a knowing "hello", and then a lot of times they laugh.

People and clothing
In general, you are supposed to cover most of your skin in these countries. People say wearing no shirt is a bad thing. (damn!) That may be true in the cities, but in the rural areas we've been in, that rule certainly does not apply. Even today, going through both Muslim and Buddhist villages, you see a lot of guys wearing only the typical red and white checkered scarf you see everywhere, but they wear it around their waist. It's kind of like guys wearing only boxers, and evidently that's acceptable even for grown guys to wear all day.

In some muslum villages, the guys would wear loose-fitting clothing, many times white but sometimes colorful, and the little shallow hats. Even the little kids were dressed in the colorful robes sometimes, so cute!

Women generally wear brilliant colored robes or dresses, with flowers or designs on them. Many wore some kind of headscarf, but we saw only two women wearing the entire black headscarf with nothing showing but the eyes. That must be hot!!!

Animals
This area has the tallest cows we've ever seen! They're huge... I proably look them straight in the eye. They're the white ones with a big hump behind the neck. They use them to haul around carts, plow their fields, and of course eating.
As big as the cows were, the horses were small! We've seen not a single horse so far on this trip, till this day when there were all these miniature horses everywhere pulling carts.
Dogs here are nice! Only one dog-bike chase scene yet. I think mostly they're too lazy.


Fun Locals and the crazy finish
A little before lunch, we stopped at a Buddhist wat to see where we were on the map, and a couple of monks came out to chat with us. They were eager to practice their english and of course were very curious as to what we were doing out in the boonies in cambodia.

Back on the road, we found a local guy also riding his bike, who spoke a little english, and soon we were following him to the market to eat some lunch- rice plus dried then fried beef. It's always fun to meet local people as they show you how it's really done. And, it can be kind of awkward trying to order food when you speak almost no Khamer.

A little later on, it was time for a water stop. No sooner had we stopped than about 15 men materialized and were soon trying on our helmets and sunglasses and trying to ride our bikes. The seats are usually about a foot too high for the locals, so watching them try to ride our bikes is always entertaining, both for them and us. After that, a pitcher of palm wine came out. Local custom is to take a shot (believe it or not, palm wine is no Cabernet...) of the alcohol, and then you chase it with a piece of pickled herring! What a shot! I think we need to introduce this into the states. It seems like a lot of times you find a bunch of men in the afternoon just sitting around bullshitting and drinking... i wonder how they get anything done.

Though the whole ride was pretty rural, there were houses along most of the road- the houses are along the road and all the fields are behind the houses. This means we pass a whole lot of families, and in every family there are about 5 cambodian children, cute as can be. In Lao, they all yelled "Subaidee"to us, but in Cambodia eveyone knows and shouts "Hello" to us. Every little kid is just thrilled to see you, and will wave excitedly and shout to you until you say hello back. We must look crazy to them- on bicycles, covered in dust and mud, bags on our bikes, way out in the middle of nowhere. The parents will show us to their children and make them wave to us.

As the day wore on, the weather started to turn. First came the wind, then the rain and a little lightning. Soaked to the bone, there's nothing to do but keep riding through it, with dark a few hours away. The road turned from dirt into mud, and the riding became slow and slippery. In the last 15 miles before Kampong Cham, our road dissappeared entirely, replaced by a maze of winding singletrack paths leading through pastures, bamboo groves, and little villages. Knowing that Kampong Cham was south of us and on the Mekong, we knew if we just headed south on all these paths, we'd eventually run into a highway that would take us to the town. Any time our spirits sunk low, some bunch of little kids would run out of a house and then people would be yelling for us, saying hello and cheering us on. It felt as if we were one the last leg of a race, and these were our fans, propelling us to the finish.

Somewhere between the intense rain and wind, being covered in mud, seeing the crazy animals, meeting monks, drinking palm wine, saying at least 500 'hellos', and whitnessing the interesting blend of both Muslim and Buddhist cultures, I realized that this day was one of the best ever. I guess you could say we were high on life.