Battambang and back to Siem Reap

Battambang turned out to be a lovely little town, untidy, chaotic but great fun to just walk around and watch life happening.

Outside town though is one of its real attractions the "bamboo railway". The pictures below explain it better than wordsNow  can do, but in essence the rolling stock, and I use that term loosely, consist of nothing but two axles, a basic timber and bamboo platform and a lawn mower sized engine driving through an old fan-belt. These are all built as lightly as possible so that if two meet going in the opposite direction, the lightest loaded could quickly be lifted off the track to let the other go through - what a simple solution to a single track railway! Apparently for awhile in the eighties and nineties these were quite common in Cambodia as a simple way of moving goods up and down the countries badly damaged railway tracks. Now most have gone but Battambsngs lives on (though by the looks of it 100%as a tourist attraction rather than as a load carrier).

Riding on it is as much fun as it looks; they jolt around terribly because of the condition of the track, but still manage to hurtle on at (reputedly) up to forty kilometers an hour. Hopefully there will be a video link in this post to give you a bit of a feel for it.

After a couple of nights in Battambang we headed back to Siem Reap by luxury coach - seating arrangements were interesting.

Actually, just kidding, this was only a local bus that took us the first few k's from the town center to the bus station proper. The coach we had for most of the journey whilst tired was much more normal in its seating layout and quite adequate.

Cambodia (1- 3 Dec 2014)

The next few weeks posts won't, for once, be about a bike trip. More of that is coming soon but in the meantime I'm going to use this blog as a place to record other travels.

Years of living in Australia but mostly holidaying in Europe has always let me feeling slightly guilty that I'm not visiting my own backyard of Asia more frequently - in fact my only real trip there was in 1983 on my way to Australia. So I've vowed to travel there more often in the next few years and this is the first step - three weeks split equally between Cambodia and Bali.

December the first saw Megan and I step onto a plane at Sydney and less than 24 hours later, after a brief overnight in Kuala Lumpur, arrive in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Why Siem Reap? Well its the town that sits beside Angkor Wat (and as I soon discovered many other equally, but differently spectacular temples), somewhere I've wanted to visit for many years. Megan has been here before but for me a complete new experience. We spent our first day in town doing the temples; up early to see sunrise at Angkor Wat then on to some of the other key ones. The scale of the place is what blows you away. Angkor Wat is supposedly the largest individual religious building in the world, and it's just one of many other huge structures- all superbly crafted out of stone; different to the European cathedrals but equally stunning. When you start reading about Khmer history you realize just what a limited view of the world we learn at school - in the twelve centuary they had a city of a million people when the population of London was just fifty thousand. Anyway here are a few photos just to whet your appetite.

On to Battambang (Dec 4)

After only a day on Siem Reap we're on the move already to visit a small provincial town of Battembang. When I was planning the trip the main attraction for going there was the journey to it by boat - reputedly the most scenic in the country. Well it fully lived up to it's billing; seven hours of travel across lakes and down narrow waterways where you could really see both the natural beauty of the country and the basic lives of many of the people. Cambodia has the lowest average income in Asia at under $3000 per year and you could see the reality of this on the poor riverside communities we passed through- but balanced against this were the smiles and waves from everyone.

 Shall we sayloading standards are interesting

Suddenly Ireland's almost over

Hard to know where the time has gone. We've been here nearly three weeks and in two days this part of the trip is over and it's off to the IoM for the bike races.

Is been a fantastic trip overall. The usual little trials and tribulations of two people traveling in close company and one big one when we managed to drop the bike whilst Megan was getting on to it. Unfortunately she ended up the bottom of the pile, with me and bike on her and consequently had a very sore and stiff leg and knee for the last two weeks. It's now being better but so slowing her down a bit - but she's taken it amazingly stoicly.

The trip itself has been predominantly a tour of the Irish coast heading clockwise from Rosslare where we landed to our current location of Derry. The only significant inland excursion was in the first few days of the trip, when we visited Glendalough, site of a seat of Irish learning in the 9th to 12th centuries, and more importantly for us the name of the farm in Australia that Megan (who is proudly of Irish descent) grew up on and has (until very recently) been in her family for several generations. A few pictures of Glendalough (including of a circular bell tower that are very typical all over southern Ireland) below.

Catch up photos

Just a few photos. For various reasons I haven't been able to be as organise with either my blogging or photography as I would have liked for this trip. You'll just have to accept that Ireland is an incredibly beautiful country and has wonderful scenery around most corners. The trouble is a lot of its panoramas which really don't photo well. Also whilst we've been reasonably lucky with the weather with only a few really wet days there have been a lot of overcast ones - which has also not helped the photo count.

The trips beginning

Well bike is successfully reassembled, and after a 500k test ride I'm reasonably happy it is running OK and is likely to be able to do a few thousand more over the next few weeks without too much risk of problems. Fingers all crossed as I write that.

More importantly my girlfriend Megan has arrived safely in UK. We spent a few days together in Bath and Swansea so she had a chance to get over jet lag and also to meet my family. In fact she got the full whammy of family in one go as both my sons are currently in the UK as well as my father, brothers and their families.

I have to admit some worry at the start of the trip. I don't normally carry a pillion even at home; here on a fully loaded bike is going to be an interesting learning experience. In also in awe of Megan being brave enough to choose to come on this trip with me, given she's only known me a few weeks.

Getting ready for Ireland

Suddenly late April is here and I'm back in the UK for another motorcycle ride. 

The main purpose of the trip is to rebuild the bike post its theft recovery and then give it an extended ride  to see if it's survived  well enough to do another longer trip later in the year. It's also an excuse for me to cross an item of my bucket list by going to Ireland and then on to the Isle of Man for the TT races.

This trip is also a bit different to the past in that I have a girlfriend and hence passenger with me.