Eight Hundred Kilometers Later

How difficult is it to write about a two week bike trip across Southeast Asia? Every day there seems to be a highlight of the trip and trying to compress it in one entry seems extremely challenging. Yet creating separate posts for each day pose their own challenges as well. 

How long can I keep this up? Editing pictures, creating infographics and writing half-baked entries that may or may not be posted? It's worth a shot to write something memorable. Or maybe just to sit down and write. 

What I remember the most was the nonstop pedaling. The road was so flat most of the time (except for a rise in elevation upon approaching the Cambodia-Thailand border), there was barely any opportunity to coast/freewheel.

I remember the intense heat as crisp morning air slowly gave way to the burning midday sun. I remember how refreshing it was to gulp a can or a 1.5 liter of Coke. Something I would never do back home but seemed like a necessity on the road.

I remember the children frantically waving and shouting "Hellooooooo!!!" at us as we biked along the highway. At some point, we even had an escort of schoolgirls on their bikes as they accompanied us for a few kilometers along the Cambodian highway. I remember wanting to return every greeting but there were some days when we were so tired that the simple act of waving or shouting a greeting back took so much effort on my part.

Schoolkids on bikes were a common sight as they biked and laughed with us along the highway.

Where in the world did we get the discipline to wake up everyday at 5:30am, have breakfast before 7 and be on the road before 8? We would pedal until the midday sun would scorch us, then we would stop for a snack or a meal, and then pedal again until the afternoon. Our rides the first few days would take us to a town by early afternoon. The last few days of our ride however meant long afternoons and sunsets on our saddles