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Mar
2004-09-14 16:27:39

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tar between the potholes and my computer tells me we cycle twice the distance because of the circling around the potholes. 10 kilometers before we reach Siem Reap the road is a variety of asphalt, potholes, gravel and sand. At least nothing like the boring asphalt of northeast Thailand.

At what time will you have lunch today?

Just when I think of the conversations you sometimes have with locals while cycling, a 15-year-old boy on his bicycle adjusts his speed to mine; exhausted by the sprint he just took. “Hello!”, he says, and I respond with “hello”. Today doesn’t feel much like a social day, almost every day there are people who want to make a conversation but mostly they can’t go any further than Hello, Where you go, and What’s your name. Sometimes they don’t even know what they are asking and therefore they don’t wait for the answer. “Where you from?”, he asks. Oh no, not again. “That way”, and I point to the road behind us pretending I think he wants to know where we came from. “Aahhhh, where you go?”, “That way”, I point again to the road, this time to the road ahead of us. “What’s your name?”, he keeps trying. “Muriel”, and I keep refusing to provide more information to the same questions we get a hundred times a day. My fellow cyclist reduces speed and joins his friends who have cycled just behind us all the time. I feel sorry that I might have caused him loosing his face and I regret. Three minutes later, there he is again. “At what time will you have lunch today?” he now asks, in perfect English. Even Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have pronounced it more British. In his left hand he holds a school notebook, hiding it for me.

The Angkor Temples – Siem Reap We arrive in Siem Reap. Just before lunchtime we decide to take advantage of the half a day that’s left. We drop our luggage in the guesthouse, cycle to the ticket office and buy a ticket ...