Island and wind

The morning arrived by Moto and I meet up with Jelle for breakfast he was heading towards Thailand and then home and I was off towards Nam, after breakfast we headed our separate ways, I stopped at a bank as money needed to be replenished from the hole in the wall, I have been thinking lately that I could give up the bike easily and just carry on backpacking my way across the countries, it would save a lot of money and would mean I maybe could complete my whole trip, at the moment it looks like I will run out of money before then end.
As I cycled out of town I realized just how good it is on a bike, the people of these countries remind me why it is such a good way to travel around, I got a lot of hello’s on the way out of town and people yelling to friends as I rode passed (they probably saying look at the freak everyone) but it does make a journey. When I was heading out of town I caught up to a Moto with a big trailer full of people, I popped in behind and slipstreamed for a bit, I was greeted with smiling faces, ok some of them where tooth less but they still smiled and there was waving and laughter as well, it really does make the day.
The 27km took less than an hour to ride and I arrived at Kep, for a start when you head into Kep there does not really seem to be too much, it is as you head to the shore and cruise the road along beside the see that you know why the French made this a holiday spot when they governed Cambodia. The are many ruined villas along the coast road, some have become homes for the locals. The architecture is pretty marvelous and places show a lot of forward thinking in their design.
I had had a look at the local map and found there was a wharf so slowly made my way towards there, I had a heap of time, so took a slow ride along the coast. It was nice to have the sea breeze and the smell of salt and all the other smells of the sea again, it felt like I had been away from the sea for too long. There is something about the sound of waves crashing against the shore and the smell of the sea I really enjoy.
I arrived at the wharf and pulled into the restaurant there, it was owned by the same people that own the guesthouse where I had stayed the night before. It was breakfast time so I sat down and eat. I contemplated my trailer on my bike, you ask yourself why, well on the way out to Kep I had noticed that the trailer felt like it was dragging behind the bike rather the gliding along as it has done in the past.
I knew it was not sitting flat anymore and thought this might be the problem, I was trying to figure out the best way to fix it, to see if I could get it running true again. After I hard feed I took to the trailers front end, the bars at the front were no longer sitting even so the first step was to sort that out, with a little help from the builder across the way I managed to get it all to pieces and started to knock a few things back into place so the front arms would be more level. I spent maybe 45 minutes doing this and then tested it to see how it sat behind the bike. By this time I had a crowd watching, most of them probably had more idea then me I what I should be doing but because they could not speak English they just stood and watched.
After I had tested it, it was still wrong, the trailer was more flatter then before but the back wheel was still off centre, then, you know how you can look at something and for the life of you can’t work out what is wrong, then you have a little step back from the project and it hits you, well this is what happened to me, I realized the back wheel was out of shape, the bars had been bent across, this would have happened in the van ride.
I got one of the crowd that was still hanging around to hold the front of the trailer down while I bent the bars at the back into place. New rule for trailer, when someone is tying trailer to a van make sure they don’t tie rope to the back wheel it is not strong enough to take the weight. So not the trailer is running more or less straight. Once I was finished with the trailer I sat back down and had lunch and waited for the group to arrive.
After reading my book for a couple of hours I was going to give them another 30 minutes which would make it 3pm, if they had not arrived by then I would find a guest house for the night and head off to Vietnam the next day. About 10 minutes after I had decided this they turned up. So there would be 3 Germans, 2 girls one guy, an English couple and a Cambodia guy who was going out with one of the Germans and me.
As we sorted the ticket for the island I locked the bike up beside the restaurant, the guy who manages the restaurant said it would be safe so I just went with it and hoped it would be, it was kind of out in the open a bit. We jumped on the boat and headed for the island, now these boats are long and have very low sides, when the sea is choppy you get soaked to the skin, so this is how we arrived at the island like a bunch of drowned rats. I did notice that the driver and the other crew man sit right at the front or right at the back and stay dry. The swines.
Once on the island we headed off towards were the bungalows where, Klous the German Guy who was mid sixties lead the way as he was here only a few weeks ago. At the bungalow me a Klous decided to share a bungalow because otherwise someone would have had to stay at another place. After I dropped my stuff in the room I headed straight for the sea, it was so good to be back in the water, it was not a deep bay but I ended up swimming around for about an hour or so. The water was lovely and warm, the only thing that was not so good was the fact that the wind was blowing straight into the bay.
I did manage to do a bit of body surfing though which was good fun. After the swim I headed for a shower which was just a bucket of water, I really like the back to basic stuff, the bungalow were a Bamboo flax construction, that sat about 3 foot off the ground and had a hammock out the front and two single beds with mossie nets in side. The bathroom was again Bamboo and flax construction but with a concrete floor.
After my shower I went back to the bar for dinner, ordered the food straight away as we were on island time now so it would take a while. I chatted with the others while my food was prepared. We had some music playing so it was a nice evening, a bit later on the younger ones of the group headed off to smoke some weed so I headed off to bed, old man I know.
The weather blow into a storm that night with heavy rain and high winds lucky for me my bungalow was protected by the others so it did not seem that bad, the huts hold up to the weather really well.