My Great Escape: Motobike ride - Sunday 4th December

Well this weekend it was the turn of the motorbike ride. Ali had her usual 2 wheeled companion and I hired one of Dari at Lazys for the day.
We set off at 8am and caught the ferry across to Koh Paen - island in the Mekong by Kampong Cham - in the dry season there is a bamboo bridge connecting the 2 but it is still in the process of being built at the mo, so ferry it was.

Ali on the ferry

I started off here - safely in the middle - but like any mode of transport here they squeeze on as many as possible so slowly but surely I was moved to the very edge of the ferry while Ali was laughing away safely in the middle..

Here's the ferry coming over in the opposite direction - not so full as ours.

Ticket booth at the other side.

View back over to Kampong Cham and the bridge.

Me and my bike

We rode around the whole of the island until we found another ferry on the other side - Everyone was busy out in the fields planting crops, as like other places alot of this island was flooded until recently.

What strikes me about this place is who clean it seemed to be and how all the old houses where in good condition. Rumour has it that during the Khmer Rouge time that they didn't come over to the island and that during their regime this island just carried on quietly without any disturbance.

Wattle and Daub Khmer style - apparently these are for drying the tobacco in.

Very rickety bridge so obviously I sent Ali over first!

Reminds me of a dog brush!

We found another ferry port on the other side...

and the ferry - the best one of the day - well lets say the safest one of the day...

A local farmer watering his veggie patch while we waited for the ferry.

So we caught the ferry over to the main land again on the other side of the river - went up to Preah Theat for lunch.

Lunch time watching the barber across the road doing a roaring trade on a Sunday morning - those chairs always make me think of Sweeny Todd..

On the road again.... this time we went to find a weaving village which was past Wat Maha Leap

Followed the river along to Preak Chrangkhan which is a silk weaving village. this guy did catch a fish..

It was lovely riding through all the villages - we reached the silk weaving village but that will be on another blog entry later.

it was then time to find our way back - by the way this is all done without a map - they don't have those over here and also no sign posts - luckily Ali is fluent in Khmer so we stopped a lot and asked directions.

it was the bank below that we had to negotiate just to get on the ferry to start with - very funny - in the end the locals came and helped us by holding on to the back of the bikes so that they didn't end up in the river. It doesn't look that steep but it was I promise you...