Anduong Tuek:

Arrived 27/4/2011

A day that I will never forget.

I can't remember what the lady called these
(maybe some form of lychees?)

Super tasty! 

I was warned of massive mountains I will have to pass over and told I should stop at the first river crossing of Tatai 20km along.  Nice accommodation and I could re-assess and see if I wanted to get a bus instead.  Tatai approached pretty quick, I felt good and the hills weren’t so bad so I continued on.  The hills then became big and ridiculously steep.  Near the top of the first hill was a conveniently situated drink stall. Stopped, downed some water and fizzy and wrung my top out of sweat.  Within in 3 minutes I was soaked again, the sun was scorching and hardly a breeze in the air, the only relief was descending which was comparably shorter!

What you get when you sabotage your own bike!

So things were ticking along until I did the stupidest thing possible while riding, let alone cycle touring!  Admire the lush scenery and not pay attention to the road, fall off and go head over heal over my bars? No. Ride the wrong way and not realise? No.  Hear a funny sound (not bad just a wee noise) coming from the front wheel, think, oh I’ll just rub my shoe against the rim and see if that flicks off some dirt and stops the noise? Yes.  The result was that my shoe caught the wheel and ripped four spokes, clean snapping them off at the nipples (screws that hold them into the rim) – Calvin what have you done?!!! You idiot what did you expect?  You’re in the middle of nowhere and you have rooted your front wheel.  WHY??!!  Why would you do such a thing!

The two spokes that didn't make it

The wheel couldn’t even turn so had to stop there, part way down a hill with no shade in the middle of the day and the sun was stifling hot!  I had taken 6 spare spokes and now I had to put into practice what I thought I knew about replacing spokes.  Everything came off the bike and lay in the sun roasting away.  And I mean roasting – all my water went from lukewarm to hot, any tool left in the sun became too hot to touch again and a I left a piece of bread out for about 30seconds and it was half toasted by the time I ate it. 

Two spokes munted, two spokes salvageable.  Somehow it worked and I managed to straighten the wheel again and so far (a day later) it is holding strong.  I really hope that wheel lasts the distance now, I still cannot comprehend why I thought of such a stupid action – I don’t really want to make this trip any harder.  Will be resupplying on spokes when I get to Phnom Penh.

The rest of the day was fine, in fact really good progress 100km of hills and a nice wee guesthouse to stay in but all I could think about was the second it took for me to destroy my wheel!

Please remember this is a PG site and derogatory comments about my stupidity should not be placed…

The floating village

The Locals...forgotten their names now too.

Toilet and bathroom in the corner - shower was a
bucket and scoop worked pretty well

Just in case the contractor forget the plans they
could refer to the sign for details...

I think the elephant would come off better if hit when crossing

Watch out for the mysterious fog?