Last night, we decided that our next stop would be Phnom Penh, where we could hopefully sort out Re's bike once and for all (or at least, for a little while). But before we headed to Phnom Penh, there were a couple of sights we wanted to see in Kampong Cham this morning. After finally rolling out of bed at around 7:00 am, and having a breakfast of fruit and coffee, we said goodbye to our nice room, loaded up the bikes, and hit the road.



Our first stop was the bamboo bridge that runs from Kampong Cham to the island of Koh Paen, in the Mekong River. The bamboo bridge is an elaborate, maybe, half mile long bridge that connects the island to the mainland during the dry season. Every year, they disassemble and reassemble the bridge when the river is low enough. We found our way to the dirt road that leads down to the bridge, then slowly made our way onto the bamboo surface.



The bridge is kind of spooky to ride on because the surface is covered with split bamboo that bounces when you ride over it, making a very strange noise. The other scary thing about it (for me, at least) is that the surface isn't exactly level, and there are only short bamboo uprights between you and a big splash.



The other freaky thing is that the bridge is only slightly wider than one normal lane, and occasionally, you may meet an oncoming car, or more likely, a donkey cart loaded with wood or cured tobacco. We both made it across fine, but then ran into the fare collectors, who grossly overcharged us. We paid the toll and then rode across bamboo mats that covered the sand until we reached firmer ground. The island itself is very large. We rode for at least 10 to 15 minutes and never came to the other side, and in fact, my GPS showed a network of roads (floating magically in the water, since my map doesn't actually show the island).



After riding through small towns, past a couple of wats, and through rice paddy, we turned around and headed back to the bridge. The return trip was no less nervous for me, since the right side of the bridge seemed to be even less level than the left.

Safely back on dry land, we headed to Wat Nokor, which is an 11th century ruined temple made of laterite and sandstone.



The construction was similar to the temples at Angkor, but these were built by Mahayana Buddhists. We pulled into Wat Nokor, parked our bikes under a big tree, and then explored the grounds on foot.



A modern Buddhist temple has been built in and around the ruins, so it's a bit of an odd juxtaposition.



We spent 30 minutes or so walking around and sweating our asses off. Since it was getting too hot to stand around anymore, we hopped back on the bikes and rode off in search of some air flow.

It was now around 11:30, so we headed for Phnom Penh. Today's ride was only a few hours, but the landscape did change fairly dramatically during the ride. We came to our first real areas of organized agriculture and rode through large groves of trees, ponds of lotus flowers, and expanses of rice paddy. The other change for the day was that the roads were in fairly poor shape, and traffic was increasingly aggressive and unpredictable. After weeks of easy riding in Thailand and Laos, it felt at many points like we were back in India. My GPS guided us into the city and to the front steps of the Sunday Guesthouse. We stayed at the Sunday last time we were in Phnom Penh and found it to be a good combination of price, location, and amenities. Funnily enough, the room we are staying in is one of the rooms we stayed in last time as well. We parked our bikes, unloaded our gear, changed our boots for sandals, and walked up to the Sorya Market to look for a new camera. We found several camera stores in the Sorya area, and found a couple of options for cameras. The good news was that the two models we were interested in were more than an hundred dollars less than they were in Bangkok, but the bad news was, we couldn't decide which model to buy. So we walked the three quarters of a mile back to the guesthouse, empty-handed.

Phnom Penh is one place we don't need to discuss where we're going for dinner, since we've both been fantasizing about tonight's dinner for weeks. Last time we were here, we found our favorite restaurant in Phnom Penh- Nike's Pizza House. Cheese and expert preparation is what makes Nike's special. Cheese is a rare commodity in most of the countries we've visited recently, so if you get any, it's usually not much. Cambodia, or at least, Phnom Penh, is a different story. They import cheeses from all over the world and they are not afraid to use them. We walked the familiar route down to Nike's and ordered the best thing on the menu: the calzones. Re ordered hers filled with spinach, blue cheese, mozzarella, garlic cheddar, parmesan, and tomato sauce. I ordered mine with salami, tomato sauce, ham, mushrooms, blue cheese, and mozzarella. They can cook them one of two ways: baked or deep-fried. Guess which we went for? Oh yeah, deep-fried. When the crispy, brown, fried footballs of love showed up on our plates, we did what we usually do: cut them down the center and swap them half for half. As soon as our knives sank into the crust, cheese started to ooze out and pool on the plate. Oh, the cheesemanity! They were as good as we remembered, and we washed them down with an Angkor. After dinner we stopped at the Lucky grocery store for some pastries and . Re also picked up a box of her “natural” hair color to take care of the two inches of roots she's been showing. Back at the room, we kicked on the A/C and enjoyed our pastries while we caught up on some emails.

80 miles in about 2 hours.