National what?

Instead of taking the highway to Koh Kong-and then find a way to cross the Cardamons-I opted for a boat to Thma Sar, a village in the south-east corner of the Boutum Sakor peninsula. According to my map there were only few patches of dirt road here and there but I felt confident I would find some way to head north. It took me several days to find if such a boat existed, thankfully a girl in Ana Travel(across Monkey Republic, the best place to find info about anything) called a relative who lives there and found out that there is a speedboat that departs everyday at 10 sharp for Thma Sar. Time is relative over here, so the speedboat carrying me, my bike, 6 locals and what seemed like more than 1.000 eggs that miraculously survived the bumpy ride, didn't leave before noon.

We arrived in Thma Sar in lunch/nap time, so it was relatively quiet. Dozens of fishing boats were lined up across the floating houses, I wonder if the catch is sold in Sihanookville to feed the armadas of tourists arriving everyday. Leaving the village behind me, I realised that my expectations regarding the road couldn't be further from the truth. There is a dirt road alright, that goes both north and west. For the next two days I covered most of it, first day going west, I have a feeling I got really close to the port opposite Kaoh Samit , at least that's the impression I got after asking around. By then it was dark so I backtracked a bit and spent the night in Ta Nuon, didn't find any guesthouses but a woman was kind enough to let me stay above her store. She has one of the few generators in the village so after a while her store was packed with teenagers that covered the plugs with their cellphone chargers, then bombarded me with questions about European football and after realising I know jack shit, they started teaching me khmer. Next day I headed back to Thma Sar and took the road north towards Andung Tueg. It was a long day, the road is bad in most of its part, a couple of times I had to push as well. People here are not exposed to tourism at all, no one speaks English or French, but they are always curious and I soon got used to being stared at. Sometimes they avoided me as well, especially the women. Most of the people I met wanted to know everything about me and my bicycle and I soon found myself lying about its actual cost, telling someone it's five years worth of his income doesn't sound right to me. I wish I had learned some khmer while in Otres apart from the very basics, at least my vocabulary increased tenfold here and Im sure I'll learn more along the way. I also realised that maps are almost irrelevant, you need to constantly ask around. Sometimes you get good directions sometimes you don't, one thing is certain, distances will always be wrong. When you're told that something is 2-3 km away, expect it to be at least 10 or more...

 

 The majority of the peninsula is part of the Boutum Sakor national park, so one would expect that it is well protected, but this is Cambodia. 30 per cent of it is sold to a chinese company with resorts planned for the near future. Once again, the locals that used to live there were relocated, I believe some of them were sent to houses built across the southern part of the peninsula, and the rest to the port opposite Kaoh Samit. Over there there is a hotel that has exclusive rights(!) to the sea so that customers can enjoy snorkeling, therefore the villagers-fishermen that were kicked out of their own land-are not allowed to fish in the area.

 

It's a great ride and a better alternative to the Sihanookville-Koh Rong highway. You'll be passing by thick chunks of rainforest, a couple of beautiful villages, a monastery with friendly monks, a couple of lakes and rivers. I'm sure there's some excellent trekking to be had in the rainforest in the middle of the peninsula, but the only place to get the necessary info is in Andung Tueng. With all this back and forth I didn't calculate the exact distances, by approximation only I'd say it's 60km from Thma Sar to the port in the west, another 65km if you take the east road to Andung Tueg.I've got a feeling the place will change drastically very soon, a taste of what will come are the last 15km up north, where the road suddenly gets scarily wide, enough to fit 6-7 cars next to each other.

Waiting for the temperature to drop...

We made a pact. I would feed him...

...and he would comb my hair.

Repairing a flat tire, first but surely not last of the trip.

A small note. I'm trying to find a way to embed a google map, together with the route I do everytime. Anyone knows how to do it? I'm also having experiencing difficulties with blogger's editor, I find it buggy and restricting. Care to recommend a good offline editor that's compatible?