Didn’t get off to the absolute bestest of starts. The motorbike guy came with a new scooter to replace the one from yesterday, after we’d protested about it having, among other things, no back brake. The one he’d brought was a major upgrade: two brakes. Sadly on my test ride, the right-hand mirror proved so loose as to resist any attempt at positioning. At the slightest bump it just flopped down uselessly.
I said I wasn’t happy. I wanted a bike with both mirrors functional. The man borrowed a spanner from behind the desk, removed the mirror, removed the corresponding mirror from the old bike, and tried to fit it. Unfortunately, this proved impossible, because the lump of threaded metal it was supposed to screw into was broken. He started talking about getting us yet another bike. By this time Virle, having been hanging around for half an hour, said ‘Oh, just take it.’ So we did. Who needs two mirrors, eh?
We were heading for Wat Sampov Pram temple, up in the hills in the national park. Apparently there were fantastic views from the top, and a fair sprinkling of more on the way, plus other attractions, en route and thereabouts. That’ll do! And so it did. For one thing, the roads proved far better than yesterday’s, being metalled all the way. For another, once we took the turn off into the national park proper, we found ourselves riding through grand, majestic scenery, quite unlike any we’d seen in Cambodia up to now. Even the scooter was playing nice, coping with the long climbs and the hairpin bends with aplomb.
After a good long haul, we came to the first viewpoint, and obediently went for a view. Sadly, there really wasn’t one: the weather had closed in, and in lieu of ‘glorious panoramas, with views as far as Vietnam’, we could see little but swirling mist in the valley, with visibility maybe a couple of hundred metres at most. But with the mist, and the quiet, broken only by the occasional birdy tweet, it was really quite a nice place to take a break.
A little further up, we turned a corner to find ourselves looking up at an enormous Buddha, which hadn’t even been in the brochure. Up close it proved modern and surprisingly crude, but still impressive in a sort of ‘isn’t it BIG?’ sort of a way. Almost directly opposite was the Royal Residence – a surprisingly modest little building, apparently built as a nature retreat for King Sihanouk back in the ’30s. It must have been lovely in its day, if as I say surprisingly bijou, for a King ‘n that, but was now just a derelict shell, broken down, covered in graffiti – mostly bad – and really rather poignant. And it did feature some quite good bits of street art…
After that we continued up the winding road, now starting to level out, with thinning vegetation as we approached the temple at the summit. Which proved to be a really quite weird place. The temple itself consisted of a number of small buildings, some shrines, others more like admin blocks. What seemed to be the main temple was small, and occupied by a young monk consulting his mobile, as well as the usual array of golden iconography, rather curious wall paintings, with a kind of bas relief effect, and, weird-but-wonderfully, a string or two of colourful flashing LEDs. Why not? Cheers the place up! Typical of the kind of charming open-mindedness and lack of po-faced solemnity we’ve become accustomed to in such places. Why wouldn’t you have colourful flashing lights? They look great!
The weird thing was, all around the site – absolutely cheek by jowl – were massive blocks of ersatz French housing, a la Phu Quoc, but obviously much older, and more delapidated, as well as an enormous steel-framed skeleton structure which had no obvious reason for being there, or function, or, well, anything really.
Still, maybe that’s all of a piece with the kind of lack of solemnity/self-importance I was just celebrating. Who can say? Ugly as, though, and couldn’t but somewhat detract from the appeal of the place.
Onward! To the hotel on the hill, billed as a rather spooky and very atmospheric relic from several pasts. Onetime hangout of the colonial smart set – French Cambodia’s Great Gatsby crowd – later it became a favoured haunt of Cambodia’s moneyed elite back in the so-called Golden Age of the ’50s and ’60s, before rather falling out of favour, lastly turning into a hangout for units of the Khmer Rouge, who used it right up till the ’90s, after which it really did go into decline and decrepitude. We were rather looking forward to checking out its palatial accommodation and grand ballroom, as per the brochure; but when we got there we found it fitted with what were clearly quite recent doors and windows, populated by a handful of workmen cleaning blinds and pottering round the garden. No access, so no ghostly ballroom for us.
Oh well. That was basically it for the trip, so we headed back to town, had another lunch at our favoured lunch restaurant, came out, got on the bike and…NO! Yes! Flat back tyre, again. Same time, same place as yesterday. Seriously? Seriously.
Came back to the hotel by tuk tuk, explained to the manager, who’d chided me for not approaching him first yesterday, rather than going straight to the bike place, which we’d done since it was just round the corner from the stricken scooter. He basically brushed me off and told me to sort it out with the motorbike man. I reminded him of his words yesterday, and he grudgingly made a call.
Half an hour later, bike man turned up, this time with the receipt/agreement, which stated that while they were responsible for the engine, any accidental damage, spare parts, flat tyres etc were down to us, and he wanted more money. Language barrier notwithstanding I made it quite clear that I didn’t give a flying one for his small print and that was not going to happen, sunshine, then settled up for the two days, writing off the remainder of our 48 hours, and off he went.
So that was us, bikeless again. Oh well. We did make two cracking days of it, despite the wasted hours and frustrations.
Off in the morning, destination Kratie….homestay, tuk tuk tour, and river dolphins! Can’t wait!