Wednesday 27th December
Miles: 89 Climbing: 9803ft
Today I started thinking about my plans for New Year. I’ve never been a huge fan of New Year but I figured that I may as well have a look to see if I can plan to be somewhere nice. I was a bit unsure about where I could cross the Mekong, information was a bit hard to come by, but I figured that I might be able to reach Siem Reap for New Year. With that in mind I pushed on to cover almost 90 miles to reach Kratie and hopefully the dolphins.
I had found a good rhythm in my riding by now and was getting better at finding places to get drinks and sometimes food. I definatly needed a lot of drinks today, it was starting to get unbearably hot and the road had become very dusty. I kept looking down at my arms, thinking i’m sure I wasn’t this tanned yesterday. I had stopped wearing my fingerless cycling gloves some time ago due to the ridiculous tan lines I was developing and now I looked really brown, maybe even a bit orange. I looked like an Oompa Loompa!! It didn’t look natural at all so I wiped at a small patch on my arm and it came off. I was so filthy that I had actually changed colour.
During the many hours on the road I had seen a lot of overloaded vehicles. There were the strange trucks which I could easily overtake, there was a motorbike being towed by another motorbike, just by each rider holding an end of a piece of rope. And then there were these motorbike that had been turned into lorries. I was impressed and horrified all at once.
