By Any Means: His Brand New Adventure From Wicklow to Wollongong (34 page)

We were a little behind schedule now. Tonight we’d be camping close to the ruins of the temple at Beng Mealea, and it would be good to get there before dark. We rode on, crossing ravines and tributaries of the Mekong. One bridge had been completely washed away and some villagers had built a temporary one which they allowed us to use at a cost of one US dollar. Beyond the village we climbed into the hills, the delta lying green and flooded, the village half hidden between clusters of palms, the road as red as the clay I’d seen in the slums of Mumbai. It was breathtaking scenery and the ride was turning into one of the great days of the expedition.

And then it rained. It rained and it rained. It rained so hard the roads turned to mush and we were sliding around corners, losing the back and bogging the front in ruts and divots. I’ve never experienced rain like it, falling as hard and fast as hailstones, slamming into the tank, the handlebars, our hands; it pebbledashed our faces and all the time the clouds got lower and lower. It was a total transformation. A couple of hours earlier we’d crossed a bridge in brilliant sunshine, stopping to watch a bunch of guys fishing from two bamboo barges.

At around five o’clock we hit a town and sheltered in the lee of a cafe where TVs blared and a whole bunch of men were betting on something. This rain was unbelievable: it fell in a single grey curtain, the drops so big they bounced. Within minutes the street was a river.

We watched a guy struggling to get his umbrella up, though there was little point - he was already soaking wet.

‘I’m absolutely knackered,’ I said. ‘Even with the rain, the heat here is killing me.’

‘Me, too,’ Russ said. ‘It’s been like this ever since China: not just the heat but the roads, the rough country . . . And how many times have we switched vehicle?
Songthaew
, buses, jeeps, boats, more buses, motorbikes into Hanoi . . . that was an experience just in itself. It seems much harder to cross through the countries here. And I’ve never experienced humidity like this.’

‘It drags you down, physically, doesn’t it,’ I agreed, suddenly weary. Talking to Russ, it dawned on me how much effort we’d been putting into the trip since Nepal. ‘Travelling is tiring at the best of times,’ I said. ‘Especially when you’ve been on the road as long as we have. You’re right, these last few countries have been amazing, but they’ve also been really tough going.’

We stood there quietly for a moment, watching the rain fall. It didn’t seem to have any effect on the temperature, although by this point we couldn’t tell if we were just wet from the rain instead of sweat. But having acknowledged all we’d been through, we were on a bit of a mission now, and we got going again, despite the rain.

It was getting later and later and the rain showed no sign of letting up but we had to carry on. We were riding on dirt and I was taking the bends supermotard-style with one foot forward, sliding round on my heel. The sky was plagued by a really big black cloud and we were doing our best to skirt it. In the end, though, a jungle road took us right through the middle and now the heavens opened like never before. We were riding in a monsoon. Nothing I’d experienced in Africa came anywhere close. It rained so hard we could barely see and as it got darker all we could do was follow the lights of whoever was up ahead. I rode standing on the foot pegs with rain running inside my helmet, down my face and into my beard. Russ was ahead of me and Nick ahead of him.

It felt crazy - dangerous, even. We were on a narrow fissure of road that was steadily being washed away. Every so often a cow would step out of the jungle right in front of us. As Russ put it later, if it was a white cow you could see it, but these were mostly brown and it was all we could do to avoid them.

Daylight faded completely and still the rain refused to ease, but far from worrying I was actually enjoying the ride. We’d been on the road for thirteen hours, and it was exciting. One section was a bit ugly, mind you, really dark and narrow, the road heavily rutted and pitching left and right. We hit puddles like ponds and the road surface was so loose it just seemed to be part of the flood plain. Oncoming vehicles were a real hazard; with the headlights in our eyes we couldn’t see anything.

I decided it was getting just a little hairy, particularly for a tribe of frogs that decided to cross the road just as we were passing. A little further on we hit tarmac again briefly and found a proper petrol station with pumps and mechanics, the works. Russ pulled up, put the side stand down and got off. Behind him the bike toppled over: the stand wasn’t down properly, the bike crashed on its side and snapped the clutch lever off. Luckily, Nick had a spare and the garage guys fitted it for us.

‘Can you believe this rain?’ Russ asked as the pair of us took shelter while they were fixing it. ‘It’s a fucking monsoon, Charley.’

‘It’s Telsche,’ I told him. ‘She’s looking out for us.’

He stared at the wall of falling water. ‘Looking out for us?’

I nodded. ‘Making sure we keep the speed down and the bike shiny side up.’ I knew I was right, I could feel her. ‘It’s rained every time we’ve ridden a bike on this expedition. It’s my sister, Russ, she’s looking out for us.’

21

The Last Train

I suppose it’s typical that the night the monsoon hit we were not only on bikes but planning to camp as well. Nick had organised a site a kilometre from the ruins of Beng Mealea, a temple the size of Angkor Wat, in the heart of the jungle. We arrived very wet and very tired, but the tents had already been set up, there was a fire crackling and hot food cooking.

It had been a monumental ride, covering close to three quarters of the country in thirteen and a half hours, the last stretch during an unimaginable deluge. I thought there was a good chance we’d get washed away in the night so I took a camera to bed just in case: no point in disaster striking if we weren’t able to capture it on film.

 

 

Fortunately the tents stayed put overnight, but in the morning my bike wouldn’t start. I put it down to the rain, but when a mechanic from the company who supplied the bikes met us at the campsite, he said it was because I was too tough on it. ‘You’re a good rider, maybe,’ he told me, ‘but you broke it.’

Leaving him to his toolkit and his muttering I grabbed a cup of the rocket-fuel coffee we’d brewed and followed Russ and Nick to the ruins in the jungle.

This area had been mined during the civil war and a sign indicated it had been cleared by a German company. I was reminded of Tesfu, the Ethiopian lad Ewan and I had met at the border town of Zelambassa, who had lost his leg to an Eritrean mine. I’d learned then that the people who lay them rarely take responsibility for clearing them, and it was no different here in Cambodia.

We took a path between the trees, passing a massive fan-shaped piece of stone lying in the undergrowth. A short while later we reached a pile of slabs in a clearing and then, beyond it, the remnants of the ruined temple, as if growing up from the bush. There are a few temples that have returned to the jungle but none the size of Beng Mealea. The whole area felt serene and spiritual - and there was a special quietness amidst the carved stones. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d been hoping for on my travels - ancient ruins hidden in deep jungle. With the expedition in its final ‘hand-span’, I wanted to soak up every minute.

The temple is an amazing structure, with floors built on pillars and the remains of an ancient causeway winding through it. Nick told us that the builders had brought stones on rafts from nearby quarries then levered them into place with bamboo. We could still see the holes left by the poles in the ground. Many people thought the Khmer Rouge might desecrate the old temples as they had done with the newer ones - a few had even been turned into things like pig sties. But Beng Mealea and Angkor Wat had been left alone.

After an hour or so drinking in the atmosphere, we drove to the River of 1000 Lingas, at Kbal Spean, and the site of another temple high on a hill overlooking dense jungle. The lingas, or stylised penises, are carved from the rock of the river bed, an offering to the fertility gods in the hope that the rice crop in the valley below will always be a good one. Of course we had to touch the stones for luck. On the way down we found a different kind of snake. This one was black, and so slick and shiny that it looked like a trickle of oil moving across the ground. It was the weirdest-looking thing, with a hammer head like the shark. The locals claimed they’d never seen it before. Deciding it was a new species, Russ named it after Anne, who’d spotted it through the lens of her camera.

By the time we got back to camp my bike was fixed and we were soon on our way again. Our route took us into the mountains on some fantastic, tight and twisty dirt roads, bordered on one side by thick jungle and on the other by sandstone boulders the size of houses. The surface felt oiled, almost like a speedway track, and I had a fabulous time popping the front wheel and sliding the back of that poor little Honda.

At lunchtime we stopped for a breather. Finding a fold in the trees we gazed across paddies and marshland, sunken fields interspersed with tracts of higher ground where the houses were built. After that we rode the bikes as far as Siem Reap and found a hotel. We’d had no real break since Dubai, so we decided to take the next day off to recharge our batteries, get some sleep and speak to our families.

On the 15 June I left the hotel in a
coyonne
or elephant truck, a basic working vehicle with an open cab, bull-nosed and brutal. This one ran a 25 hp Isuzu engine and had been loaned to me by a nice kid called Samuel. He had a pile of mattresses in the back, old bikes, all sorts of stuff. It was easy to drive, about half as big as a good-sized lorry, and chugged along merrily. I did a few miles with Samuel alongside me then said goodbye, hooked up with the others and headed for Angkor Wat.

This colossal temple was started in the twelfth century but never completed. Over a period of thirty-five years, 300,000 slaves and 6,000 elephants worked on it, but King Suryavarman, who commissioned it, died before it could be finished. Originally a Hindu temple, it became Buddhist when the religion of the country changed in the fourteenth century. It’s a ruin now; the stone black with age and the humidity of the jungle. The towers are built in layers of stone that look almost like pancakes, and the steps are so steep that you have to climb backwards when you come back down, using your hands for balance.

I felt very calm here, just as I had at Beng Mealea. Angkor Wat is so huge that even with lots of other visitors it’s easy to climb a tower, gaze across the gardens and steal a moment to meditate. I did notice the breasts, however. There are lots of statues of bare-breasted women and the breasts are all shiny. People rub them, for luck or fertility, I suppose. I rubbed them. God, I’ve been away from home too long.

A couple of hours later we were on the move again. The Thai border was beckoning, as borders always do when you get close, but we still had a way to go. And before the border we came to a village that in winter wouldn’t have been there.

There’s a huge area of very marshy land near Angkor Wat called Tonle Sap. Each spring, when the snows melt, the Mekong floods the whole area, forming a gigantic lake. And each year the whole town has to be moved. The place had been described to me as a village, and I had been expecting a few houseboats. But as I made my way through the ‘streets’ in a small fishing boat, I realised it was more like a city, with strange echoes of Mad Max or Kevin Costner’s
Waterworld
. Like Venice, it was all hustle and bustle, with masses of boat traffic. I passed a school, shops, cafes - even a hospital. The houses floated on plinths, boats, anything that would keep them above the water, and seemed pretty well made. They all had nets for catching fish set up underneath, and, although anchored for now, could be moved on when the time came.

I’ve never seen anything like it, so many boats, so many people, water taxis, bus-boats. Everyone did a double take when they saw the English guy buzzing along in a wooden skiff with a lawn mower engine on the back. There were no gears, not even neutral; it was either on or off, the rudder fixed to a stick that acted as the tiller. The throttle was a little lever close to the exhaust which was blisteringly hot and situated right under my nuts, which was a shade uncomfortable. Trundling along what I thought was probably Main Street I ran out of fuel. The engine note dribbled to nothing and there I was, stranded, with only the pole I’d used to propel myself away from the jetty.

A girl on a veranda of what looked like a cafe began yelling and beckoning at me. At last I realised it wasn’t a cafe but a petrol station. I’d been confused by the large bottle of Pepsi in her hand; not cola but diesel. With the tank full I got going and motored back to the jetty.

 

We left Siem Reap the next morning and headed a little reluctantly towards the border. I was really sorry to be leaving because this country was up there with India and Nepal in my affections; something about the people, their warmth, smiles, just the whole crazy atmosphere of the place. It felt like a forgotten jewel that had finally been noticed and was beginning to sparkle. After years of war and oppression, tourism was growing and roads were being built; the only problem being that this spelled the end of some traditional ways of getting around.