Trumpets and Rain

Happier times earlier that day

I fully expected a hero's welcome in Siem Reap after biking 150kms that day: trumpets sounding, people cheering upon our entry into the city. What we got instead was a downpour. Our first downpour of the trip.

I looked up at the sky and said, "Seriously?" 

It's been a running joke among the three of us that any new trip I've taken with them has to be a waterlogged adventure. Holidays or weekend trips are no fun with me around as I always seem to bring the rain. I thought this trip would be different since we had clear skies and sunny days for the first 5 days of the trip. On the 6th day, there was rain. Lots of it.

The sound of trumpets is hard, cold, heavy rain on your helmet and cars and motorcycles spraying you. Instead of a cheering crowd, I got withering looks from my two companions. 

I shrugged helplessly. 

It was a long 2 weeks on the road. We spent 8 of those days on our bikes, cycling across three countries: Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Overall, we completed about 810 kilometers. Our lowest mileage for the trip was a "short" 60km ride from Neak Loeung to Phnom Penh.

In between, we spent our time wifi-ing-- uploading on Instagram and Facebook, Viber-ing with loved ones, and catching up with all the news back home. We first read about the wrath of Yolanda on our phones and tablets and tried our best to catch up with the latest news. 

It was my first time to explore these three countries. My two "tour guides," LA and Pen, have countless trips between the two of them. Instead of taking me to the tourist-y areas, we explored side streets and side roads. In Vietnam, we never went three blocks past our guesthouse and instead, explored every store and stopped at every food stall along our block.

You would think that with all the kilometers we've cycled, we would look thin and tan and lean. We got the tan part, the thin and lean, not so much. We stuffed ourselves silly with pho and banh mi in Vietnam, black coffee with condensed milk in Cambodia, pad thai and street pancakes in Thailand. And we had beer at the end of every day of riding. Saigon beer, Cambodia and Angkor beer, Chang beer-- name it, we've gulped lots of it.

There was a certain order to our bikepacking: Our route was so well-planned and well-oiled-- Pen organized the route in such a way that we had designated rest stops for the day and a guesthouse to look forward to. Everything was so neat and tidy until we decided to throw caution to the wind. We took an almost unknown route to the Osmauch border and had consecutive century days despite telling ourselves we would never go beyond 90kms. 

We've been biking together for so long that we knew each other's nuances and mannerisms on the road. We knew who would lead, when to back off or when to approach a headwind. We knew that we didn't need to talk every kilometer of every day. We just understood each other's flows. 

The trumpets I so wanted to hear weren't found at the end of long days and supposed cycling achievements. The trumpets were there on every pedal stroke we took. That was the beauty of life on the road.