On the Road Again.

The flight into Phnom Penh from Singapore was a smooth one and, before I knew it, I was at Lucky Lucky Motorcycles, with whom I'd arranged the hire of a Honda XR250. On arrival, the proprietor took me off to his "other shop", closed due to the Khmer New Year and the formalities passed smoothly. Giving me directions to my target, Kampong Cham, the gentleman waved me off while advising me against tackling any jungle tracks. "If anything goes wrong," he said, seriously, "you will have to leave the bike in the jungle to find help." As he was holding my deposit (my passport) at the time, I was minded to listen to him.

The bike, before hitting the trails.

The ride from Phnom Penh to Kompong Cham is a simple, rather boring one. The terrain is flat, with few distinguishing features and quite a lot of dust from the road. Given that the government is conducting a wide-ranging overhaul of the country's road network at present (funded by China), roads are punctuated with chicanes and poor surfaces, which the XR250 devours with ease, enabling the rider to power along at 40 m.p.h. without feeling too unsteady. Amid the dust, however, I was intrigued by the parties I saw at every pagoda, with various Cambodian pop songs and variants of PSY's "Gangnam Style" blasting out while groups of people danced (more on this later).

The first stop came around Skun, made famous by Gordon Ramsay three years or so ago, when he came here to eat deep-fried tarantula. Said to have begun during the Khmer Rouge years, this food is popular around Skun and is eaten by locals and tourists alike. I was sure that I was in the right place, for two giant tarantula statues were outside the eatery.

A real shocker for passing arachnophobe drivers.

Before coming to Cambodia, I had engaged in the pre-trip bravado and swore that I'd eat the deep-fried arachnids. Now, having not eaten since Singapore the previous evening, I wasn't too sure and was relieved to see that they weren't on the menu. Seizing the escape route with glee, I ordered something else and told myself that I'd do it on the way back through...

The way to Kampong Cham was punctuated still further by pagoda parties and not much else, so reaching the city itself was a relief of sorts. However, due to  the Khmer New Year, the city was dead and only PSY's dulcet tones indicated any sort of life. I'd also made excellent time, reaching Kampong Cham within two hours or so, and decided to head off to Kratie along the west bank of the Mekong.

Now this was interesting. Little villages of wooden huts on stilts, random livestock (mainly pigs), dirt roads, pleasant glades and plantations, smiling children shouting greetings and, of course, Khmers in pickups and on scooters laden with crates of beer, no doubt heading for the pagodas. Some people hadn't even gone to the pagoda, instead choosing to party at home. I was greeted to the sights of folk swaying rhythmically beneath their stilt houses, smiling and red-faced. On the latter point, I had no room to talk, looking like one of Father Christmas' reindeer due to the fact that I'd forgotten my sunblock.

Around thirty miles from Kratie and having lost sight of the river, I needed direction. Stopping for directions earlier in the day had resulted in an old man drawing a map on his hand, but this was altogether different. A party was going on on a bend, and so I slowed to ask for directions. Immediately, I was surrounded by about six bobbing, swaying, zombie-like Khmers with glazed expressions, holding out their hands in supplication as house music pounded in the background. Feeling like I had been transported into some perverse combination of Resident Evil, the Haçienda (Manchester's infamous nightclub of the 1990s) and some sort of pagan ritual, I hurriedly asked for directions to Kratie. Still the hands were cupped in supplication and still they bobbed and swayed. Pulling five hundred riel from my pocket and placing it in a pair of cupped hands, they all nodded and made praying gestures before pointing me straight down the road. How bizarre.

Eventually I crossed the Mekong on a little wooden ferry, perturbing locals as I sped up the sandy ramp with ease (thanks to my 250cc engine) to a freshly-hacked coconut, some non-verbal banter with a shopkeeper and a bed at the Balcony Guesthouse in Kratie.

Lifting one's shirt up to reveal the belly appears to be either a Cambodian fashion or a way to cool down.

My dinner was very much "eat-and-be-thankful", given that deliveries weren't being made due to the New Year and therefore the hotel had very little of what was on its menu...

The sun dips over a floating settlement on the Mekong.