Pigs on bikes, and some place with wats

Late start this morning, I had a feeling my washing would still be damp as it had rained most of the night, and guess what I was right, picked it up anyway and went for some breakfast, put the cloths I was going to wear on a couple of chairs to dry a bit, then went about the task of getting breakfast, noodle soup, it seems the only thing they eat for breakfast in asia is noodle soup. Now don’t get me wrong here I enjoy the noodle soup but after 4 or 5 days you just want cereal.
Packed up and hit the road about 8:30am so latest start so far, should have just done my own washing, that’ll teach me. The roads in the cities, or towns are fairly crazy and you really have to think about which side of the road they drive on. Bad move if you get it wrong, but people will just beep and drive around you. Not that I am saying I got it wrong it’s the locals who drive down the wrong side of the road.
It did not take me long to leave Sisophon behind, I had managed to find a big 1.5 bottle of water before leaving, it seems most places only sell the small bottles. Back out onto those straight flat roads, 90km to Siam Reap, should not be too bad. The day was warming up, and the humidity must have been in the high 90’s I would say, black clouds were building on the horizon but I had blue sky above me.
20km outside of Sisophon I came across something unexpected, a hill of all things, not a big hill but a long slow rising hill, I powered up it nicely and it was a good opportunity to do a photograph of where I had come from. Headed over this hill and there was another one, Katie you said Cambodia was flat, there’s hills on these here plains. As I went up the next hill I came across some big rock work factories, where they were chopping up yep you guessed it rocks, but you may ask what for, come to Cambodia and find out for yourselves, sorry no I realize Terry live vicariously through me so have to tell you. Buddha’s, They chop these massive boulders up and then these guys further up the road chisel them into sitting or standing Buddha’s, I has to stop and has a watch. Some of them use machine grinders some chisels and hammers. On the big ones, now these are maybe up to 2 meters there are three of them working on it. It was interesting to see but I still had a lot of riding left.
I left them to their work and carried on over the hill and back onto more flat straight road. Have to also say this is all new road and in very good condition. I came towards a small town hugging the road, and this is where I saw it, pigs on a bike, now I am not talking about small pigs, I am talking about big pigs, Sows and not sure what they call male pigs, but these guys had them loaded up on the back of their motorbikes and were off down the road. The pigs are tired into these brace type things, and loaded on their backs, their legs are free to move. Not sure what happens if these guys crash the pig gets up and runs away if he can I suppose.
It was getting on towards lunch now and the beast was hungry again so stopped in for Fried rice and beef for lunch, the lady cooked me up a huge amount which I have to say I thought was sweet. Munched through that in no time at all. They were having a big old chat about my arm and the graft there, pointing and all that so I showed them were it was. One of the older ladies was fascinated by this, so showed her me leg graft as well. Not really sure what they thought it was from but they had a good chat about it.
Had 30km to go and those clouds that were on the horizon this morning were now starting to pass through. I grabbed my jacket out of the bag all ready for the rain to arrive and much to my joy it passed in front of me so just had a wet road to ride down. Of cause about 10km down the road it poured down, monsoon style, buckets and buckets of water came down. So I asked the local guy to stop throwing the buckets on me they were starting to hurt.
This down pour lasted till just outside of Siam Reap, when it finally stopped, by now I was soaked through, great arrive in another town wet, it seems I do this a lot and that’s what you get when you ride through Asia in the monsoon season. I have found a nice place and will sort out my five day pass of Angkor wat, I think this is a place that you should take your time to see, I will have my bike so will just cruise around and enjoy a few temples a day, will also look for good spots for morning time photo’s as I won’t be watching the sunset over Angkor Wat as it rains most nights here now.
Well wish me spiritual enlightenment.