The story of the busted wheel...

Ok, sorry for the delay... I've been battling the pain in my back for ages, and when we stop for the night, I've not had the energy to write much...

More on the back pain later, but for now, here's what happened with my rear wheel:








It split!!

BADLY!!!







We left the nicely appointed guesthouse all ok (other than my bruised & cut foot from where I slipped in the bathroom and bashed it over the edge of the tiled step)... And got rolling along the roads heading northwest towards Siem Reap.
After about an hour of riding, I started to hear a slight knocking/rubbing sound... A rhythmic, rotating sound... I thought it must be the magnet that makes the speedo work, but nope, not that.
Glancing down at my rear wheel, I noticed my brake calipers were steadily twitching... So I stopped to check, and sure enough, could see the rim bending out and the tyre starting to bulge at the same point.
We stopped, and I spent a half hour trying to fix it, but as expected, to no avail. The aluminum was so fatigued, as soon as I pumped up my tyre it just bent back out.
The brake pads had also started to wear a groove in the tyre side wall, so rather than wreck a perfectly good tyre, I disconnected the brake cable to open them up, relying on my front brake only.
We had about another 80 kms to go to reach Siem Reap, so both of us were hoping the wheel would hold out that long.
It made it another 10 kms before bulging even more... So much so I had to use a mini bungy cord to pull my brakes open further, as they'd began to rub again.
I rode on another 10 kms, and by then, we were just hoping we were going to make it to the next small town, another 7 kms away, stop the night there, and then figure out how to get a ride to Sien Reap to get a new wheel, as it wasn't looking likely that it was going to hold on much longer...
And it didn't. It lasted another 100 yards, and with a pop and a whoosh, the inner tube failed, and we were pushing the bikes 6.9 kms to town!
After 4 kms of pushing, with lot of kind locals offering to help us fix my flat tyre, (but then realizing it was a bigger problem than one we could have fixed ourselves anyway) and no trucks that could give us a ride, we were fully resigned to pushing the rest of the way. It was then that a double-cab flatbed 4x4 flew past, the slammed on the brakes, jumped into reverse, and came back towards us. A smiling face popped out of the cab and said
" Do you need a ride to Siem Reap?"... And that was how we met our new friend, Kimsour.






What a guy!
He dropped us off right in the middle of town, and once we'd found a place and washed up and he'd gone back to wash up and pick up his lovely lady, met us in town and showed us the real Cambodia night life, and some amazing local beef and chicken dishes.
So out of a sucky-busted-wheel situation, we came out much better off, with some great local experiences, and some new friends.

Luckily for us, the next day, we found a great new bike shop in town, The Vicious Circle bike shop, who sorted me out with some sweet new rims and hubs, ready for us to carry on rolling on.

















So that's the story of the busted wheel..! Sorry for the delay.
More posts and pix WILL be up shortly too, I promise... There's been some developments, for sure!

Cheers!

RWK.
OUT.

-Posted from my amazing iPhone 4!

Location:Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Roadkill... Of sorts!

Never one to let an opportunity pass, especially a free feed one, I picked up a wayward pineapple that was lost on the side of the road...



We've not eaten it yet, but it does smell good!

- Posted from my amazing iPhone 4!

Off the beaten path...

After a nice night in a small beachside resort, we hit the small winding roads back towards the bigger main road to carry on south.


- Posted from my amazing iPhone 4!

Location:Liap Hat Mae Ramphueng Rd,Bang Saphan,Thailand

Saying bye to Bangkok...

Riding into the setting sun, and a persistent headwind, we made our way to Bangkok, early last week.



After a great, much needed break in the big, bustling city, tomorrow morning Tom and I hit the road again, soon to be heading South, and rolling out the last 2000-odd kms back to Singapore.

Paige joined us here for a few days, which was great, but she too has to head off tomorrow, back to KL, to film the last scenes of her show.

Tom should be posting an update soon, and I have just added 2 new albums to the main website. You can see them HERE.


During the week, we had to spend a fun few hours sorting out our passports & extending our stay by another 7 days, so we have time to get to the Malaysian border... The immigration officer we met was a real miserable bastard too, & he didn't make the whole process any easier... Immigration procedures... They suck! But we got there in the end...


So for now, I'm gonna sign off and get some sleep... I'm all typed out.
More soon!

Cheers...

RWK.

-Posted from my amazing iPhone 4!

Location:Phetchaburi 13,Bangkok,Thailand

Waiting in line...

Tom is inside now, probably in another long queue...
I'm waiting my turn whilst watching our bikes & gear...

We just left Cambodia, which was a fast, painless process, although the border guard looked like he'd much rather be out fishing... Or something, anything, rather than processing departing people's passports...







And as I just discovered, I can pick up some good, free WiFi, I thought I'd make a quick journal update... & apologize for not making another as I said I would last night... I had every intention, but we lost all data... No wifi, & the town only had phone service... No GRPS, EDGE, and certainly no 3G...

Once we actually get in to Thailand, I'll source a new phone card, & hopefully, we'll have better data coverage... We will see!

Cheers!

RWK.

OUT!

-Posted from my amazing iPhone 4!

Location:Aranyaprathet,Thailand

Angkor Wat

We came, we saw, we took photos... And so did thousands of other people..!
It was somewhat crowded at the temples to say the least, and since I was there 4 years ago, unfortunately, the increase in tourists is showing in the wear and tear on the amazing structures.

Even with roped areas cordoning off parts of the temples, and new boardwalks and photo-platforms, the hoards of Korean and Chinese tourists that swarm through, en masse out of coach after coach, still clamber and climb all over the walls, trees and buildings. Ta Prohm, the wonderfully overgrown, untouched temple was particularly bad, looking significantly more damaged because of people than on my previous visit.

Their rude, pushing, shoving, me-me-me attitudes wore thin fast... After being barged by one same guy for the third time I had had enough, and as he tried to push past me again, (he'd got past me each time, but id wander ahead... But he kept overtaking as he rushed to be ahead again) he got a well-placed elbow in the solar plexus, which finally gave him the message...

But for the most part, we just bade our time, waiting until a moment of peace, and took our photos and enjoyed the momentary serenity.





Tom, waiting for his moment...

Our break in Siem Reap was good though, giving me a chance to rest my bastard sore sciatic right hip, and to replace both my wheels.

I'll tell more about that shortly, but for now, here's a few more images from the temples;





"Postcard, postcard? One dorra, one dorra!"... One of the many children that want to sell us things... I didn't need ir want any postcards, bracelets, books or mouth-twanging "musical" instruments... But I did buy pineapple a few times... Partly because I wanted to give them some business, and partly just
'cos I like pineapple!


























So now we are about 40 km's away from Poipet, and the border crossing to Thailand.
We are about to have dinner, so mill sign off, but I PROMISE, I'll update more about the events that got us into Siem Reap a bit faster than anticipated, and the fun time we had there, meeting and making new friends...

Cheers!

RWK.
OUT.


-Posted using BlogPress from my amazing iPad 2!

Cambodia: FLAT!

Yeah, it's flat ok..! But not always smooth. The roads here can be a bit hit and miss... And when it's a miss, it's a lot of a bone-numbing bumps and pot-holes miss...

We crossed into Cambodia last week, having cranked the 90kms from HCMC surprisingly easily... Stopping for fresh bread around the 70km mark was a nice second breakfast, and the border crossing around noon went reasonably well, once we'd been herded here and there to get to the correct desk a few times...





Leaving Vietnam...





And arriving moments later in Cambodia...

It didn't take long for the roads to change... About 3 km's into Cambodia, the road went from the smooth regular Tarmac we'd been used to, to a rough, bumpy coarse aggregate style surface, which then continued for about 20 km's until we reached the outskirts of a small town, where it changed to a wonderfully smooth, finely graded road.

By then, our hands, wrists and butts were pretty numb from the bumps and rough rumbling ride... Crossing onto the new surface, as I said to Tom at the time, was like night and day... Like going from rolling down a rocky slope in a barrel, to skating on freshly Zamboni'd ice...

It was another reason to enjoy rolling in to a town...smooth rollin'! Aside from that and fun interactions with the locals, we also like the cold soda or fruit juice opportunities!
However, we soon discovered the smooth rolling also only lasted as far as just outside the other side of town, and we were back to rough riding.





We rode about 50 km's into Cambodia before calling it a day and resting up at a nice little guesthouse, a short way down a side road in a small town we were passing through.
By lunchtime the next day, with the roads still mostly rough, we rolled into a larger town only to come to a screeching halt at a huge traffic block that was all stopped at the Mekong River. We suddenly found out that but we were about to have to take a ferry ride 300m across the mighty, muddy river.
$1 later, (the tickets were 50c each), we found ourselves jostling for room right on the back edge of an open decked vehicle ferry, next to bicycles and mopeds laden with good, animals and fruit.





















The other side of the river saw a huge change in the road surface... One for the (very much!) better... So much so, we made some great km's, knocking out a total of 127 kms and getting into the capital city of Phnom Penh by early evening.

We spent a couple of days there, resting my back and taking a few pictures of the beautiful temples and the grand palace.
Although it is a large part of the history of Cambodia, neither Tom nor myself felt up to visiting the area known as the Killing Fields... It is a 'tourist attraction' but not in the usual sense, but the atrocities that occurred there were not something we felt we wanted to see first hand at the time. Maybe next time.





We did enjoy the sights, sounds and food of the city though, and Tom also got to take his first Tuk-Tuk ride, when we took the little moped-pulled carriage back from the supermarket, before wandering out again to take pix of the temples.







Tom got to dip his hand in the mighty muddy Mekong too..!






Rolling out of Phnom Penh, the lovely smells of freshly baked bread filled the air from the many bakeries north of the city. It wasn't long before we left the city behind though, and got back out not the green palm filled countryside, with, for a change, a nice tailwind helping us along.












Ducks on sticks... And sometimes on sticks, on bikes, were for sale all along one stretch of the road, which was well worth a photo break...





We'd clipped out a decent 135 km's before late afternoon, and upon reaching a small but bustling town at a large crossroads, we found a beautiful new guesthouse, complete with piping got water, cable tv, AC, and even solid wifi, so for $15 we checked in, grabbed some food from the well-stocked gas station over the road, and crashed out.

We got a good, well-rested early start the next day, aiming to do another 120 to 130 km's, which would have left us with about 60 kms to roll into Siem Reap the next day, but my bike had a bit of an issue, which made us have to rethink our plans...





Right now though, it's dinner time, and I need a break from typing... So I'll update more shortly.

More to come soon!

Cheers!

RWK.
OUT.

- Posted using BlogPress from my amazing iPad 2!

Location:Sivatha Rd,Siem Reap,Cambodia