Bike Riding Through Cambodian Countryside

From Bohemian Trails: 

Bright green fields stretched to my right and left, scattered with small wooden shacks with resting farm animals, drying clotheslines and barbed wire fences. A bright red dirt path stretched in front of me. The air was hot and extremely humid, a combined feeling of refreshing and stifling. There were no cars and no mopeds, only bikes running over the million little rocks stuck within the country road.

The vivid colors, open air and bicycles were all in the Cambodian countryside I had the privilege to travel through in October. The experience taught me an important and unforgettable lesson: One of the best ways to spend time exploring a new country or city is to do so through bike riding.

Bike riding, especially in smaller, more off-the-beaten-path destinations, allows you to go places and see things in ways that traveling in cars, trains or airplanes will never let you do. You can take your time and relax, stop where you want to and go where you want to with little hassle and with little disturbance of the area around you. You get to enjoy the open air and do a little exercising while actually interacting with the people and places that you see.

Bike riding may be a little more time consuming than other modes of transportation, but the experiences you have while doing so will almost certainly be more memorable than staring out a window. This is what I discovered when I made proficient use of bicycles in one of Cambodia’s smaller, southern coastal towns. I spent the better part of a day bike riding through dirt paths, past cow herds led by dogs and little children, and along stretching rice fields and salt flats.

I ended up having the most memorable experience of my whole trip- Angkor Wat temples, Tuol Sleng and Killing Fields all included.

My destination was Kampot, an old French colonial hangout now suffering from the same poverty afflicting most of the rest of Cambodia. The town is very small, and doesn’t attract near the number of tourists or ex-pats asPhnom Penh and Siem Reap, but it’s all the better for it.

Kampot has one of the country’s finest ensembles of old colonial architecture, but I admittedly didn’t spend much time in the city center. Instead my traveling companions and I took our rental bikes (another plus in Cambodia: bikes cost about $2 to rent for the whole day) and headed on a path leading to the countryside. We went to the farming fields and shacks of poor farmers who have undoubtedly seen very few Westerners in their day.

There was no destination and no itinerary, nothing and nobody rushing us through the journey. We kept to the path as the fields flanked around us, stopping only for an occasional photograph.

Most of the scenery was the homes of local farmers, the dirt road and rice fields: an accurate depiction of how so many Cambodians live their daily lives. Gone were the pothole-filled roads left un-maintained by corrupt government officials. Gone were the hoards of mopeds and vehicles cruising down the main roads. Gone was even the slightest hint of visiting tourists to the region.

One thing that remained, however, and which we experienced very often in Cambodia, was a personal and genuine friendliness from the families and children we passed by. Excited children constantly greeted us with shouts of “hellloooo!” both up-close and from afar, and their parents often smiled and waved to us as well. They welcomed us to their land openly and without reservation, furthering the sense of belonging I was already beginning to feel.

All these elements together created a scene that was calm and a beauty that was sprawling. Even through the heat, the humidity, and the physical exertion, it was all a profoundly calming experience; being alone and isolated from the city crowds and pollution exhaust, being able to breathe and take in the vivid, stretching colors with little interruption. Those images, feelings and interactions all combined to give you a complete sense of being grounded and connected there, to the land and the people and the history of the whole place. Seeing the locals and their homes and a small piece of their lives, so far removed from my own, created both a feeling of isolation and a sense of belonging I’ve never felt before, but now believe every traveler should experience.

My path took me a total of about 10 miles and left me sore, bruised, tired and dirty. Yet if given the chance to do it over again, I would take it in a minute.

The next time you ponder renting a car or buying a bus ticket, be a little more adventurous and head to the bike rentals instead. Don’t be lazy. The experience outweighs the extra effort tenfold.

Tuk-Tuk Drivers

Tuk-Tuks are a little hard for me to explain. They're like furnished wagon carts with roofs, sides and seating, all pulled by a motorized scooter. They're the primary mode of transportation for tourists within larger cities like Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, as well as the primary mode of transportation to the Angkor Wat temples. Surprisingly introduced to Cambodia just about five years ago, you can now find them anywhere you need them.

We found a loyal tuk-tuk driver with a very interesting story to tell.

Our Phnom Penh driver, Y (full name undisclosed), was a middle-aged man and a survivor of the Killing Fields. He lost one sister to the mass murder campaign, but luckily him and the rest of his immediate family survived the four years of horror. He worked the labor fields like everyone else, and he shared with us his personal story of how he secretly prepared and ate food in order to keep from starving to death under the harsh working conditions. Even the smallest of details could have given him away. He hid certain food under brush fires and covered them with items he could logically explain away. He took particular precaution to cleanse his mouth, so that the Khmer Rouge couldn't smell the food on his breath.

His actions probably saved his life, and after the fall of the Khmer Rouge he went on to work for several NGOs and international organizations. His knowledge of English and his very open demeanor made him many friends and acquaintances.

In 1997, when The Far Eastern Economist published a now-infamous interview with former dictator Pol Pot, Y said he served as the English translator on that assignment. Coming face-to-face with the now-sick and aging murderer still left him shaky and frightened- as he plausibly should have been, given Pol Pot's continued power to order extra-judicial executions.

Y spent several days driving us around Phnom Penh and to a couple other destinations on the southern coast of Cambodia. He was very knowledgeable and very friendly, and at the end of our stay he invited us to his home for dinner with his wife and family. His young son is being sponsored so he can go to private English school, and we had a wonderful time helping him practice.

We still have Y's contact information to recommend him to future travelers, and I'm pretty sure we won't forget him, his family, or his story. What a great find.

The Killing Fields

One of the very first things we went to see in Cambodia were the killing fields. I have been shocked to discover that many people don't know what this refers to, but just to be on the safe side let me explain: the killing fields is another name for the hundreds of mass graves still existing in Cambodia as remnants of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979.

The Khmer Rouge was a "communist" government led by dictator Pol Pot. In an attempt to convert Cambodia into an egalitarian, poor farming society, the regime essentially killed between one and two million people either through disease and starvation or through torture and execution. That number is close to one fourth of the population.

The majority of executions took place in open fields outside the major city centers, hence the term "killing fields." Today you can visit and tour some of these sites, even as bodies and evidence are continuously being excavated.

We only visited one major killing fields site, just outside of Phnom Penh. There is an audio tour available and a large monument housing hundreds of human remains from bodies discovered in that area. None of this is for the faint of heart, as the stories are graphic, horrifying, and frightening. You can still see clothing and bone fragments along the designated tour pathway and the locations of the burial pits are clearly identifiable.

The fields are now very lush green, but one can only imagine how they must have looked in their heyday.

All the scenes I visited in Cambodia touched me in a very particular way, and the killing fields happen to be one of them. They are exceptional to other remains of the Khmer Rouge regime, i.e. the brutal prison Tuol Sleng, because of the beauty, grace, and life they seem to exude in the wake of such a gruesome past. Yes, I thought the killing fields were beautiful. Both beautiful and nightmare-inducing at the same time.

The paradox of such beautiful scenery harboring such an evil and ugly history was an overwhelming thought. I will never forget the spiritual and mental impact this particular place had on me. Enough said.  

Cambodia Intro

I arrived home from Cambodia this past Saturday, getting off a 24-hour travel stint and feeling extremely jet lagged and exhausted. My two weeks in Southeast Asia, my first trip to that region of the world, were a bit of a roller coaster. I traveled to five different cities in 14 days and saw flashbacks of both glorious and horrific days in Cambodia's checkered past. I relaxed in the small coastal towns and partied in the major urban hubs, catching a glimpse of everyday life in vastly different environments and arrangements. Here is a small introductory slideshow of what I've been up to, with closer snapshots to come in the following days: