Not Going Gentle Into The Good Night Of This Date

After a great weekend of cycling, I had a busy and somewhat tumultuous couple of days.  They weren't bad:  I just didn't have any time for anything besides work, some business I had to attend to (more about that later) and, of course, cycling to it.

Today I will once again invoke my Howard Cosell Rule and write a post that's not about bicycles or bicycling.  Well, I'll briefly mention some of my riding but it will hardly be the focus of this post.

Instead, I want to talk about this date--9 November--which, as it turns out, is one of the most momentous and tumultuous in history, particularly that of the 20th Century.  

I'll lead off with the event that touches, if indirectly, on my cycling.  Some of my most memorable rides took me through the countryside and among the temples of Cambodia.  Seventy years ago today, the home of the Khmers and one of the world's greatest human-made structures gained its independence from France, the country that colonized it along with neighboring Laos and Vietnam.

Now, if you ever wanted proof that correlation does not equal causation (or, more precisely, that coincidence does not equal correlation or causation), consider this:  On that very same day, in 1953, Dylan Thomas ("Do not go gentle into that good night...") died in St. Vincent's Hospital, in the heart of Greenwich Village.  He had turned 39 years old a couple of weeks earlier and, as with any artist who dies young, legends and rumors grew around him.  One I often heard--but for which I could find no corroboration--was that he "drank himself to death in the White Horse Tavern."  Though he was a heavy drinker, he didn't suffer from cirrhosis of the liver.  He did, however, suffer from respiratory ailments and, a week before he died, a heavy smog that would kill 200 people enveloped New York.  

This date also witnessed two of the most important events in 20th-Century Germany. They both involved breaking things down, but nearly everyone saw one of those events as triumphant while the other would become a harbinger of one of the human race's worst tragedies.  

Joy, at least for a time, came for many people in 1989 when, on this date, the Berlin Wall was opened.  So, for the first time since the city's (and country's) partition by the US, Britain and France on the western side and the Soviet Union in the east.  Soon after, people who lived on both sides, and tourists, hacked away at the Wall for souvenirs.  Contrary to another rumor you may have heard, this event didn't inspire Pink Floyd's "The Wall," which preceded it by a decade.

But in contrast to those who gleefully broke those bricks away, the folks who shattered glass along the streets of Berlin, Vienna and other German and Austrian cities--on this date, in 1938--were angry, vengeful and hateful, stoked by a demagogic autocrat. (Sound familiar?)  While Kristallnacht, the "night of shattered glass" may not have been the opening salvo of World War II (I believe Japan's invasion of Manchuria, seven years earlier, was, but what do I know?) it almost certainly was, if not the beginning of the Holocaust, then its signal bell.  The kristall came from windows of Jewish-owned and -operated shops, and that night, 91 Jews were murdered, about 30,000 were arrested and more than 200 synagogues were destroyed. 

Olivia Hooker 

 

I invoke my Howard Cosell Rule to discuss important historical events and people because I have come to understand, at least somewhat, how necessary it is to commemorate them.  There are very few remaining witnesses to Kristallnacht, just as there were only a handful of living people who experienced the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 when I wrote an article about it.  That piece's publication on  Huffington Post brought me into contact with one of those survivors:  Olivia Hooker, who saw the bombings, shootings and destruction as a little girl.  She was 101 years old when that article appeared and we corresponded until her death two years later.  

Eve Kugler

 

I cannot pretend that I understand, let alone feel, what she or Eve Kugler, who was seven years old on that awful night when those windows were shattered “in the land of Mozart” have carried with them through the rest of their lives and, in the case of Olivia Hooker, whatever came after.  But Elie Wiesel has written that when we listen to witnesses, we become witnesses.  Perhaps that is the best I can do--and why I am invoking my Howard Cosell rule.

How Did It Get Here?

Now I'm going to subject you to another "look at what I found parked on the street" post.

I've seen this bike a few times before, locked to a post underneath the elevated tracks on 31st Street.  It's a spot I pass often, as it's right by Parisi bakery, a Dollar Tree store and a pub whose name I can't remember because I never go to it.

In my neighborhood, Astoria, you can see a greater variety of bikes than in most other New York City communities.  Even so, this one is unusual:  It's more like bikes I saw in Cambodia and Laos than anything I've found here.

First of all, that top tube has to be one of the thinnest I've ever seen.

And that internally-expanding rear hub brake is something, I believe, that has never been standard equipment on any bike made in, or exported to, the US.  I've seen brakes like it on a few older bikes in Europe, but not in the US.

I'm guessing that someone brought that bike with him or her from Southeast Asia or Europe.  

Saturday Ride: Empires And Connecticut

It's one thing to be reminded of Paris when you're in New York--especially, say, if you're walking down the Grand Concourse in the Bronx and looking at the Art Deco buildings--or pedaling along Ocean or Eastern Parkways in Brooklyn.  As I have mentioned in other posts, these places were inspired by the Grand Boulevards of Paris as well as the wide residential boulevards of London and other large European cities.

Also, I was in Paris a week and a half ago, so I have an excuse for thinking about it.

Now, it would be fair to ask what would cause me to think about Cambodia during a bike ride to and from Connecticut.  After all, there isn't much physical resemblance between the two places.  You might think that because I was riding on a cold day--the temperature didn't reach the freezing mark the other day, when I pedaled to the Nutmeg State--I was taking a trip, in my mind, to the warm weather I experienced in Southeast Asia.

Actually, I wasn't thinking about that.  Something I saw in the Greenwich Common reminded me, in an odd way, of something I saw in the land of the ancient Khmer kingdom.

Bare branches furled themselves around a monument to young men who marched, perhaps bravely, perhaps blindly, into their own slaughters.  In another year they are mourned, their young bones turned into mud:  They remain only as names on these stones after dying to capture hills and other terrestrial features that are recorded only as coordinates on a map or, perhaps, dates and times.  

All right.  I'll get off my soapbox.  When I see a war "memorial", I can't help but to think of what a colossal waste of lives--especially those of the young--result from the rise and fall of nations, of empires--whether said entities consist of real estate or simply numbers traded and sold from one electronic screen to another.

At least all those Greenwich residents who died too soon have names, at least for as long as those stones stand.  What, though, if the trees--not unlike the ones on the Connecticut state coin--were to wind themselves around those monuments?  What if they continued to grow, as they would if no one touched them, while the stones bearing the names of the lost were to crumble?

Somehow I don't think similar questions ever darkened the mind of Henri Mouhot.   He is often said--mistakenly--to have "discovered" Angkor Wat.  Of course, he no more "discovered" it than Columbus "discovered" America:  There were thousands of people already living in its vicinity, and they all descended from people who'd lived in the area.  Moreover, other French explorers and missionaries had seen and documented the temples decades before Mouhot.  He did, however, popularize Angkor Wat in Western imagination, in part by comparing them to the pyramids.

I have to wonder, though, what went through his and his colleagues' minds when they first saw Ta Prohm.

We know the name of the King--Jayavarman--who commissioned it.  Those who cleared the jungle, cut the stones, carved the statues and made the meals for those who did all the other work are anonymous to us now.  So are those who fought to build and maintain the Khmer Empire (or almost every other empire).  What we have now are what Mouhot encountered 160 years ago:  Trees reclaiming their home from monuments humans built.

Now, of course, I am not complaining about having gone to see Ta Prohm, or the rest of the Angkor Wat complex.  It really has been one of the great privileges I've enjoyed:  The temple sites are awe-inspiring in all sorts of ways, and the people are inspirational.  It should be remembered, though, that its glories, much like those of the Vatican and the grand cathedrals of Europe, as well as the pyramids, were the result of now-nameless people whose lives began and ended as fodder for the empire.  

And, I must say, it is ironic to be reminded of an ancient marvel in a tropical climate on a cold day in a modern suburban downtown--while riding my bicycle.

Where Your Next Bike Might Come From

In a couple of earlier posts (See here and here, I examined some of the ways in which the new tariffs on Chinese goods could affect cyclists and the bike business here in the US.

Some American bike firms, like Brooklyn Bicycle Company, are deciding whether to absorb the price increases or pass them on to customers.  Others, like Detroit Bikes and BCA, are calling for even higher tariffs and extending them to all imported bikes.  

Trek and Kent--two bike companies rarely mentioned in the same breath, let alone the same blog post!--are contemplating yet another strategy which, really, shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

Trek is, arguably, the most prestigious mass-market American bike brand.  (Specialized and Cannondale are probably Trek's chief competitors for this title.)  Their highest-priced bikes are still made here, albeit with imported components.  The rest of their bikes are made by sub-contractors that include Giant, which also sells its bikes under its own name.

Kent's offerings, in contrast, are at the bottom of the market and found, not in bike shops, but in big-box stores like Walmart and internet retailers.  Some are sold, under license, bearing the Jeep, Cadillac and GMC brands.  Although some of its bikes are assembled in South Carolina, their frames are made in China and Taiwan and assembled with components made in those countries.

So...Is Trek returning to its roots by returning its manufacturing to the US?  Well...no.  You're not going to see a revival of those nice lugged steel frames they made in Wisconsin during the '70's and '80's.

Likewise, Kent isn't going to build a factory in Parsippany, New Jersey (the location of its headquarters), or anywhere else in the good ol' You-Ess-Of-Ay!

No, they are not going to do what El Cheeto Grande told all of those laid-off blue-collar workers in Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania companies would do in the face of tariffs.  Instead of making their wares in the country Trump thinks he can Make Great Again, they are talking about shifting their production to a country that isn't getting a tariff wall built around it.

If you are European, what I am about to say next will come as no surprise:  That country is Cambodia.  

The Southeast Asian kingdom is already the biggest supplier of bicycles to European Union countries.  Most of the country's bike factories are in the north, near Vietnam--which some have called "the EU's China." If you buy, say, a backpack or jacket in Europe, it's more likely than not to have been made in Vietnam, just as the new bike is likely to be from Cambodia.

It will be interesting to see whether other American bike companies make similar moves.  If anything, wages in Cambodia, Vietnam and other countries in the region are lower than they are in China. And some Cambodian bikes are already coming into the US--though, in far smaller numbers than bikes from China or Taiwan.

Everything In Australia Is Trying To Kill You!

When I was delivering newspapers on my Schwinn Continental many years ago, dogs chased me.   Deer crossed my path as I rode in the Bronx(!) as well as on rural descents in New Jersey and Vermont.  On another descent--in Switzerland--an Alpine ibex darted across my the road in front of me just after I flatted at about 90 KPH on a bike with loaded panniers.  A few years later, I had a close encounter with a mountain goat while pedaling--again, with loaded panniers--in the French Pyrenees.  

This summer, while cycling in Cambodia, I became wary of the monkeys after seeing one set on a tourist for her food and a pack of them attacking a dog.

And I've had cats, racoons, and other lil' critters come close to entangling themselves in my spokes.  I must say, though, that I've never had an encounter with an animal quite like the one a cyclist in Australia experienced:

Imagine being swatted on your helmet by--a magpie!  I won't accuse the filmer of paranoia when he exlaims, "Everything in Australia is trying to kill you!"

So Glad To Be Back That I Want To Go Back

It's been two weeks since my trip to Cambodia and Laos.  Everyone to whom I've mentioned it is convinced that I will go back.  So am I.  Any experience that brings me tears of both joy and sadness is worth repeating.  Of course, I wouldn't try to replicate the trip I just took:  That wouldn't be possIible.  But I could return, I believe, to what made the trip so memorable.

First among them is the people.  I already missed them during my flights home.  When I visit my friends in France, I miss them when I leave.  But I can't miss the familiar in the same way I miss the people I just met because, I guess, re-connecting with those you know can't change your perspective in quite the same way as people who allowed you into their lives,even if only for a moment, the first time you met them.  Plus, the only people I've ever met in the US who can match the vitality--who, purely and simply, have the heart and soul, for lack of better terms--are either African-American, immigrants or very old.  People in southeast Asia--especially Cambodia--have survived going to hell and back.  

I thought about that, again, the other day as I was riding back from Connecticut.  The temperature reached 34-36 Celsius (92-96F), and the humidity ranged from 80 to 90 percent.  Just before I crossed the Randalls Island Connector, I rode through the South Bronx.  Three of its ZIP codes--including 10451, where I work-- are the poorest in the United States.  Many residents indeed live in conditions most Americans--certainly those of my race and educational background--will never even have to imagine.  I know: some of those people are my students.  But even they have, if not luxuries, then amenities, that are completely out of reach for most Cambodian peasants and even city dwellers like Champa, the young woman who works at the guest house or  Sopheak, the tuk-tuk driver who took me around when I wasn't cycling.  As an example, the young woman told me she can't even stay in touch with me by e-mail because she doesn't have a device of her own, and she can't send personal messages on the guest house's internet system. 

Of course, you might say they were warm and friendly to me because I'm a tourist and they wanted me to spend money. But I experienced all sorts of helpfulness and friendliness--and a cheerfulness that's not of the American "it gets better" or "when one door closes, another opens," variety.  Perhaps the best expression of it came from a young woman at a gas station, where I stopped to ask for directions. "We are here," she said.  "We are alive.  We have today."

Then, of course, there are the things I saw.  While the Angkor Wat was the main reason I took the trip, and I spent about three full days in it, I could just as easily go back for Bayon or Banteay Srei--which, I admit, is my favorite temple--or to walk along the river junction or side streets of Luang Prabang.  And, naturally, eat the food--though I won't order a fruit shake, delicious as it was, again:  I think the ice used in it came from tap water, which unsettled my stomach on my penultimate night in Cambodia.

I must say, though, that I am glad to be riding my own Mercians again.  And, as hot and humid as it during my Connecticut ride, or on the Point Lookout ride I took yesterday, I wasn't nearly as tired because, in spite of the heat, the sun is much less intense.  And the road conditions are better, even in places like the South Bronx and Far Rockaway.

Hmm...Maybe, next time I go to Southeast Asia, I have to bring one of my own bikes--though, I must say, riding local bikes made me feel a bit more "native", if only for a few hours!

Back To A Familiar Light

Yesterday I pedaled the 140 km to and from my apartment and Greenwich, Connecticut.  Although it's the longest ride I've done in three weeks, it actually seemed almost easy, even when I was climbing the ridge at the state line.  

One reason for that, of course, is that I was riding one of my own bikes:  Dee Lilah, my new Mercian Vincitore Special.  Plus, although the day was warm, it wasn't nearly as hot--or humid--as what I experienced in Cambodia and Laos.  

Even more to the point, the sun was much less intense.  I didn't think of it until I got to Greenwich and sat in the Common, by the Veterans' memorial.  Normally, I wear sunglasses any time I'm outdoors:  something my opthamologist recommends.  But, as I was sitting on that bench in the Common, I took off my shades.  The green of the leaves, and the pinks, purples, yellows, oranges and other hues of the flowers seemed soft, almost cool.

Not only did I have to remind myself to wear my shades, I also had to remember to put on some sunscreen.  Even when it was overcast, I could feel the sun's heat and radiation on my skin.  So I didn't forget to massage myself with protective lotion, or to wear my broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses.  Even so, at the end of the day, I would feel the kind of tiredness I experience after spending time in the sun--say, at the beach or after a bike ride.  Then again, I spent much of my time outdoors, looking at temple sites and landscapes.

I now realize that yesterday and the day before, I was experiencing, more or less, what I experienced when I've gone to France or northern Europe in the summer:  longer hours of softer light.  I believe, though, the difference is even greater between here and Southeast Asia than between here and Europe.

In any event, I enjoyed the ride, as I almost always do.  And it is nice to be my age and not feel tired after a 140 km ride!

I'll Be Back, I Hope!

All things must come to pass.

Yeah, I know.  But I really don't want this trip to end.  Now I'll lapse into another cliche, this one from a living person:  I'll be back!

At least, I hope I will.  In any event, late the other day I returned to Siam Reap, Cambodia.  Yesterday I said "goodbye"--at least, I hope, for now--in the most appropriate way I could:  with one last look at the Angkor Wat.

It still functions as a Buddhist temple, so I wasn't surprised to see a mini-service at one of the shrines

or groups of novitiate monks walking around.

Even though this is a sacred site, the folks in charge know it's important to keep the king--and tourists--entertained:

Since I won't be able to see much besides clouds once my flight is en route, I made a point of giving myself another aerial view

and one from the ground--or, at least the second mezzanine.  After all, you haven't been in a place until you've put your feet (yes, bike tire treads count) on the ground.  

Or touch something or someone you never could have touched at home.  That's one of the things that has made this trip special.

A Rainy Day Of Contrasts

The rain started some time before I woke up. I think the young woman at the hotel's front desk knew it would rain throughout the day, and called a tuk-tuk driver for me.

That was a really good call.  The rain came and went until about two this afternoon.  Then it washed down in a torrent through the rest of the day and well into the evening.

I first saw Apocalypse Now on a cold, rainy day (Christmas Eve, no less) the year that it was released.  So I guess it makes sense that on a rainy day here I would go to--wait for it--the Landmine Museum.

Yes, such a thing actually exists. (I wasn't so surprised:  After all, I went to a Mushroom Museum and Mustard Museum in--where else?--France!)  But you don't have to be a military buff to appreciate it.  In fact, the aim of Aki Ra, its founder, is not to glorify war or fetishize weapons.  Rather, he wants to alert people to the fact that there are so many landmines and the harm they cause. And he has a goal of de-mining Cambodia by 2025.

U

In spite of his Japanese-sounding name, he's actually Cambodian.  He chose that name for himself after a Japanese journalist gave it to him.  Before that, he had a number of different names, not because he was trying to evade debt collectors, but because he was essentially "adopted" so many times.

Except that his "adoptors" weren't well-heeled go-gooder Western families.  Rather, as he says, he doesn't know exactly when he was born, but he believes it was in 1970.  Orphaned early, he was conscripted as a child soldier, first by the Khmer Rouge and, later, by the Vietnamese army after that country invaded.  As he recalls, he was taught how to use a rifle that was bigger than he was, and he preferred using rocket launchers because, at least, he could lie down while aiming them.

His training also included the installation of land mines.  He became such an expert with them that he was called on not only to install them, but to find them.  That also gave him the expertise to find other kinds of munitions  on the ground.

After the fighting ceased, he used his expertise to de-mine.  He's not the first to undertake such a task:  Many a Khmer peasant has dug up, or simply stumbled upon, these explosives.  To give you an idea of just how poor they are, they disassembled them to sell the scrap metal.  Some didn't live to tell about it; many others lost limbs, eyes, ears and other body parts.  I have seen a few such unfortunates in my travels here.

Sun Ra himself admits that, even with his expertise, he is very lucky to be unscathed--at least physically--from the thousands of mines and other munitions he found.  They became the basis of the collection in the museum he started, which is run by an NGO he helped to found.  Today, that organization works to detect and extract land mines, not only in Cambodia, but in the Middle East, Europe and even the Americas.  

As the museum's commentary reminds visitors, once placed, landmines can cause damage indefinitely.  In 1965, an explosion in Alabama resulted from mines placed a century earlier, during the US Civil War.  And, less than a year ago, 70,000 people were evacuated in Frankfurt, Germany when a British bomb from World War II was found.

The NGO Aki Ra helped to start is staffed entirely by Cambodians and, it says, pays "liveable wages".  It also runs a school adjacent to the museum, but not accessible to visitors.  Many Cambodian kids never attend school for a variety of reasons--mainly, because their families need their help on the farms or other enterprises, or because they can't afford the fees.  The stories of some of those students are posted in one of the museum's exhibits.

So, on a rainy day, what did I do after spending a couple of hours among munitions from the US, China, the USSR and other countries, as well as art and other works related to them?  I went to another museum--a preserve, actually, about two kilometers down the road.

So what was preserved there?  Not dragonfruits or lychee nuts or pineapples.  The things "preserved" there were living and not meant to be consumed, at least not on the grounds of the preserve. I'm sure, though, that someone has eaten them:  They sound tasty, at least in the English word for them.

I'm talking about butterflies.  More species have been identified in Cambodia, and in Southeast Asia, than in any other part of the world.  But, even though this area isn't as developed as the US, Europe or Japan, some of those species are, if not endangered, then declining in numbers.  As the exhibit reminds visitors, butterflies are a good "barometer" of ecological health:  Where they can't live and thrive, there are other problems.  I couldn't help but to think about how, last year, I didn't see the flocks of migrating Monarchs I had seen in earlier years on Point Lookout, Long Island.

Like the Landmine Museum, the Banteay Srey Butterfly Centre is run by an NGO that employs Cambodians, from farmers who collect butterfly eggs to the tourguides and the folks who raise the butterflies through all of their stages of life.  Some of the butterflies--which, of course, I'd never seen before coming here--look more like other kinds of insects, or even birds or bats, than what we normally think of as butterflies.  Others look like the ones most of us in the developed world have seen, only in different colors and patterns.

Admission is five dollars (two for kids).  For another four dollars, you can have lunch in the center's cafe.  I had something a staff member recommended:  a Khmer curry with chicken, pumpkin and other vegetables.  Frankly, I would have gladly eaten it no matter where it was offered, and at a higher price!

I can't help but to wonder whether there's some "product placement" going on here:  a butterfly center with a sumptuous lunch just down the road from a landmine museum.  It's sort of like watching Breaking Away after you've seen Apocalypse Now.

Waves Rise, Empires Fall, Temples Remain

Some do it because they must; others do it because they can.  Sometimes it's easy to tell who fits into each category.  Other times, not so much.

I'm thinking now about the folks who live on Tonle Sap, often called Cambodia's "Great Lake".  Like the Great Lakes of North America, it has its own climates and ecosystems.  It also has its own distinct human communities which, for all I know, Ontario, Erie, Huron, Superior and Michigan may also have.  

I took a tuk-tuk to the shore of Tonle Sac, about an hour from my hotel.  The ride took us from an industrial area on the edge of town into expanses of rice paddies and forests.  At times, the pavement on Highway 6 gave way to dirt, which turned to mud when it began to rain.

The road also narrowed, which meant that my tuk-tuk driver had to follow the unwritten, unspoken rule of the road in this country:  You move over for anything that's bigger than what you're driving (or pedaling).  That, at times, meant swerves through potholes of some liquid about the same color as an iced blonde macchiato at Starbuck's.

(Why am I mentioning the Evil Empire of coffee when writing about Cambodia?)

Oh, and all manner of living things cross the road--including oxen and cattle.  One of them might've impaled me on his horns had my driver's reflexes been any slower. 

But he got me to the shore.  I didn't uncross my fingers, though: It seemed that we'd been riding in and out of downpours.  

That tuk-tuk ride was a harbinger of things to come. Or maybe I hadn't "seen nothin' yet".  For all I knew, Tonle Sac might be like an inland sea, with all of its caprices in currents, tides and the like.  

Turns out, I knew more than I realized.  The boat I took could've been built by a Khmer farmer a century or two before any Europeans showed up.  The only difference was that it had an engine.  

The driver of the boat took us through a community of floating houses, which includes the school he attends.  He is 16, he told me, and had been driving the boats since he was 13.  He enjoys it, he said, but he wants to continue his schooling to so he can "help out" his family.

Would "helping them out" mean getting them out of that floating community--or simply finding a way to live better in it?  

One thing I must say for him is this: He isn't stupid.  I asked him to take us out into the open lake, where no land was visible.  There, choppy waves turned into walls of tide that bounced us like a beach ball off the nose of a circus seal.  He told me he could continue if I wanted to, but I could tell that he would have preferred not to.  And I didn't blame him, so we didn't.

But I did get to see fisherman unfurling, fixing and casting their nets; women cooking and cleaning. (On most of those houses, at least two sides are open.

Out in the open lake, all four sides are open--to the wind and storms as well as the decisions made by young captains and their passengers! 

Once back on shore, my tuk-tuk driver suggested two temples about a third of the way back to Siem Reap: Bakong and Preah Ko.  

Bakong, one of the oldest temples, has been called the "Khmer Pyramid" due to its shape.  It also has, perhaps, the steepest stairs to climb.  Like Angkor Wat, it was originally built as a Hindu shrine; other temples constructed for Buddhists tend not to have such steep stairs.  My theory is that Buddism stresses the importance of learning and--in some branches, anyway--an ordinary person is capable of becoming a Buddha, or enlightened one.  Hinduism, as I understand it, is like other theistic religions in that it says people have a long, steep climb to reach the Gods.

Preah Ko was built a bit later than Bakong, but is still one of the oldest Khmer temples.  King Indravarman built it late in the 9th Century CE to honor members of the king's family, whom it relates to the Hindu god Shiva.  Interestingly, it was built from bricks on a sandstone base, in contrast to later temples made from sandstone and lava.

(Note:  Both of these temples are accessible with an Angkor Wat pass.)

Temples And Bikes

Another temple, another bike.

No, I didn't buy another bike--or a temple. (If I could afford to buy a temple, I probably wouldn't have flown economy class!)  I did, however, managed to ride third different bike in as many days.  After mounting the machines provided by the organizers of the rides I took the previous two days, I did some exploring on this machine.

Here in Siem Reap, as in much of Cambodia, hotels and guest houses have bikes for their guests to use.  They are the sorts of bikes ridden by people who live here:  heavy and completely utilitarian.  Then again, most places charge only a dollar or two a day.  The hotel in which I'm staying provided the one in the photo for free.

You can tell this bike was not maintained in any systematic way.  Fragments of brackets for parts and accessories long gone are still clamped to the bike in various places. Did the bracket on the front hold a basket?  A light?  And the old shifter pod on the handlebar:  Was it for a three-speed?


The hotel desk manager actually knew enough to fill the tires before letting me ride it.  He even helped me to adjust the saddle. And the chain was surprisingly well-oiled.  But, as I found out when I dodged a tuk-tuk, a dog and a motorbike at the same time, about a kilometer from the hotel, the brakes weren't.

Fortunately, I found a hardware stall in a market strip.  The gentleman tried three different wrenches, all brand-new, before finding the 10mm open- and box-end wrench that fit the front brake's cable fixing bolt.  When I asked his price, he waved his hand.  So, I insisted on buying the wrench.  His price?  2000 rials, or 50 cents.  For good measure, I noticed he had a cooler full of cold beverages for sale.  I took a small can of lychee nut juice, which made for a grand total of one dollar.

(Most day-to-day transactions in Cambodia are done in dollars.  Rials are used only for amounts less than a dollar.  So, for example, if you buy something for $7.50 and pay with a $10 bill, you will probably get two dollars and two thousand rials in paper notes for your change.  Coins seem not to be in circulation in either currency.)

After adjusting the front--a simple side pull--I went for the rear and found what appeared to be a kind of disc brake in which the pad rubs the outer rim of the disc rather than the sides.  I didn't need the wrench to adjust it: I simply turned the cable barrel.

Then I was on my way.  First up:  the Ta Prohm temple.  I had already visited it with Vichea and Stuart, but it was along the route I happened to ride.  I certainly didn't mind seeing it again and, because I have a seven-day pass, I didn't have to worry about paying to get in.

Note:  The admission prices for what is known collectively as the "Angkor Wat complex" seems high:  $25 for one day, $54 for three and $72 for seven.  But those passes allow admission to the Angkor Thom temples (which include Ta Prohm) as well as others nearby.  Also, the seven-day pass is for seven days of visits, and can be spaced out over a month.  I figured that if I spent three days in any of the temples--which I have--I will have gotten my money's worth.

Anyway, there was no sign of Lara Croft, so the temple had to make do with me.  All of the temples are interesting in their own ways, but this one has what might be the most maze-like internal structure.  And, of course there are those trees that twine themselves around and under walls and other structures.  While all of the temples had things growing on them and creatures (and, probably, people) living in them when the Europeans found them, they didn't look like Ta Prohm.  Even there, some of the trees were cut away.  The ones that remain couldn't be cut or removed without damaging or destroying the structure.  A debate lingers as to whether the trees should be removed if a way can be found to extricate them without sending the walls tumbling down.

From Ta Prohm, I rode along varying combinations of pavement, dirt, ruts and rocks to Banetay Kdei.  Whatever its architecture or other attributes, it makes sense as a Buddhist temple for its peace and quiet alone.  It lacked the crowds of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom.  It's so quiet, in fact, that you can hear the chirps, caw-caws, moans and other sounds of the surrounding jungle!

It was built in the late 12th and 13th Centuries CE  by Khmer King Jayavarman VII, who also built Angkor Thom and completed Angkor Wat.   So, not surprisingly, some features of Banetay Kdei, including the gopuras, or face towers at the gate, echo those of Angkor Thom.  Some go as far as to say that Banetay Kdei is a sort of Angkor Thom in miniature.

From there, I got some guidance for the rest of my ride--and day.

Somehow they managed to steer me back to Angkor Wat.  I didn't mind:  I mean, it really is one of those places worth returning to, crowds be damned.  Also, seeing it again helped me further appreciate the other temples I'd seen, which in turn helped me to further appreciate the Angkor Wat.

As for the creatures:  They're not as nice as they are cute.  (I've dated a few people like that.)  A few hang around Angkor Wat.  As I was leaving, one jumped on a tourist.  One of her traveling companions swatted at it, but it finally let go when another companion tossed a pineapple chunk onto the ground.  Good thing that monkey was hungry!