Bicycles

We made the first enemies (that we know of) of our trip while in Siem Reap, Cambodia innocently attempting to explore the Angkor temples. The guest house we found offered free bicycles, these bicycles are the idea means of exploring Angkor Temples which are about 5km from town.

The carnage started about 2km from town when I gave the power house a brake check (apply heavy brakes while someone is following too closely behind, common amongst boi-racers in cars), to ensure, for his own safety that his bike was in good working order. Unfortunately his brakes weren't optimal and his concentration less so and he ploughed into the back of my stationary bike. After 10mins of head scratching, standing on rims and bending mud guards beyond recognition produced a bike which was again ridable, however the front wheel had a sizable buckle and was still getting intimate with one side of the forks on each rotation.

If this was the end of it all would be fine and I would not be writing this post. But it was not, because the power house's bike was such a dog to ride, him and I were taking turns. We were navigating around the perimeter wall of one large temple and I was on the damaged bike and came to a down hill section (which I should have walked down), I was one tree root from the bottom when the buckled front wheel was clipped and I was thrown over the handle bars landing in pain with my shoulder meeting the road. I opened my eyes to see a group of Cambodian woman sitting on the deck of their hut pointing and laughing. This continued for about 5 minutes, at which time I had reassessed the bike, my injuries and devised a story to tell the owner of the bike. The ladies came over with some tiger balm to rub on my shoulder and into my grazes (in the photo).

For me the funnies started here, I promptly returned the bike (now completely unridable) to The Power House. He was forced to carry it over his shoulders for about 2km with everyone laughing in his face and turning and steering and pointing, assuming he was just a donut that gave up and could not be bothered riding back to town. If this wasn't enough he engaged a motorbike rider to take him back to town while he straddled the bicycle in one hand and the motorbike in the other.

The traffic was bad so Matt and I arrived back to the rental store as The Power House was trying to break through the language barrier and explain that he was riding a flat track when the front wheel hit the root of a tree and disintegrated around him (all in sign language), I don't know if they understood but when we turned our backs and walked away I think they got the idea that we took no responsibility for the untimely failure of their pathetic bike.