The other side of the Mekong

As I mentioned in my last post, Pchum Ben is the 15-day Khmer religious holiday to honour elders and ancestors; the official holidays are Monday-Wednesday, 22-24 September.  Like Khmer New Year, Pchum Ben is the occasion of an exodus to the provinces, which renders Phnom Penh a ghost town.  I was eagerly looking forward to these days, because they're one of the few times I can cycle through the city without constantly wondering if an imminent traffic accident will send me off to join my own ancestors.

On Monday, I went on a cycling junket to a more rural area on the other side of the Mekong River with my friends Malcolm and Kathleen. Malcolm has chosen feet over wheels in Phnom Penh, and he walks over much of the city, but he borrowed a friend's mountain bike for yesterday's expedition.

Malcolm's a tad over 70, but don't tell anyone.
[...she says, posting it on the internet for all to see.]

We pedalled down to the bank of the Mekong and wheeled our bikes onto this little ferry. What? Why bother pulling the loading ramp up? You can fit a few more vehicles on board if you leave it down. Anyone who's careless enough to roll off the stern ramp had better know how to swim.

Bundled up in knitted caps for the sea voyage.
(A 10-minute river crossing in the tropics)

The villages on the other side of the river are rural. It's a 10-minute ride to another world. Poultry, gardens, heavily fruiting trees and this pretty, sturdy little bay mare.

"Seh," said the old lady in front of the house.
It's the Khmer word for 'horse'. Either she wanted to
build up my vocabulary, or she thought I'd
never seen such a beast before. 

Kathleen was taking her new mountain bike and all her fancy new cycling accessories on their maiden ride, so this was pretty much the last we saw of her for quite some time. My city bike has no gears nor proper shock absorbers, so I moved a bit more slowly along the rutted dirt road, and Malcolm was gracious enough to stick with me, even while I stopped to photograph all the gorgeous beasties.

"Ride past us, ride around us...You can try riding
over us, and we probably won't object. Can you say 'placid'?"

I still have my PAWS t-shirt that I bought to support the animal shelter in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. It's not as slick as all of Kathleen's designer lycra stuff, but I still love it.  My bamboo bike, despite being a city bike, performed like a trooper on the rough dirt tracks.

Old bat on a bike.

Some miles on, we pedalled across a flimsy bridge, looking out to either side over water choked with marsh grass and water lilies. Just as I was rolling off the end of the bridge, Malcolm delivered a quip that nearly sent me wheeling right into a tree.

"Hmm. Just like Cape Cod."

We pedalled at last to a different ferry dock and wheeled the bikes onto a boat that would take us to the northern end of Phnom Penh. Again, even though the journey across the Mekong is about 10 minutes, there are services aboard to cater to those who didn't think ahead and pack provisions. On the left side of the bowl are boiled quails' eggs. The things in the plastic bag are some sort of roasted larvae or grubs.  I watched the transactions, and a few hundred riel ($.10 or so) bought a fairly large sack of crunchy bugs.

The purveyor of eggs and bugs hid beneath her rose-coloured hat.

It was wonderful to get out of the city for a few hours and to find such a dramatic change of scenery so nearby. It's a different ferry, and the port is some distance from the Phnom Penh city centre, but Malcolm and I agreed that our next destination is Koh Dach, or Silk Island, which is criss-crossed by groomed trails that weave around and through villages where the residents still harvest and weave silk.  Stay tuned.