Phnom Pehn here we come!!

The Mekong river at day break

Well today was the most challenging of all to date. 65km in total, however 40km of the journey was dirt, rutted road. It took all our concentration to keep upright and moving forward, and the heat was intense. At one point it must have been up over 38 degrees.

We began the day however saying goodbye to Bob and Leah in the morning. Bob decided to try one of his unplanned dismounts and ended up being vanned straight to Phnom Pehn with his wife Leah. He was concused, but is ok. He is beginning to look like a mummy with all his bandages. I think he will be viewing the rest of the trip in the comfort of the van from now on.

Although it was an immensley challenging day on the body and brain, it was also really amazing. Weaving through small villages and slapping the hands of the kids as we wizzed by. They are all just so gorgeous, no matter how tired you are you just have to put your hand out for the next one to give it a slap, or yell out "hello". As the group has varied levels of fitness we can tend to spread out a bit, so if you come to a cross roads and no one is behind you you need to wait until someone comes and then go. They then wait and so on, so you know what direction to take. I ended up having to do this at one point. Our group was about ten minutes ahead of the next bunch and I had to wait in the middle of this little village. I felt like I was in a zoo as very quickly I was surrounded by people. I guess I must have looked funny in all my garb, covered in sweat and dust.

One of the highlights of the day was stopping at a school. What a buzz. The kids were just so excited and each of us had a circle around us. Some were brave enough to test their english, limited as it was, but some how we managed to communicate with them. One little girl Danine gave me a hair ornament. The kids are always a lot older than we think. I could have sworn she was 8 or 9 but she was in fact 13. We got to go through the class rooms and had a ball trying to teach them the mexican wave (of which I might add we weren't flash at either. We had one way fine, the return wave was horrendous).

We stopped for a english lunch of bread rolls, cheese and salad (oh and peanut butter). it is amazing what you will eat when you are hungry. I don''t think I have ever considered a peanut butter, cheese and lettuce sandwich before.

After lunch we finished the last of the 18km of our journey. This had to be the hottest part of the day. It really took it out of all of us. At one point when I thought I couldn't go on a local boy on his little bike came out and indicated to Adam He wanted a race. off they went and Adam eventually powered past him. As I was behind Adam I had a feeling I was going to be next. i was so stuffed, but sure enough the challenge came. It amazes me where you can find the energy when you really need to. Needless to say we raced hard and I finally changed down and blitzed him, to his delight and the line up of others along the road.

We transferred to the vans again and were bused to Phnom Pehn along the Mekong river. It is so amazing. It is certainly the life blood of so many families. We arrived in Phnom Pehn and had a chance to sower and then a few of us zipped down to the Central market on a tuktuk. We are visiting our Sponsored kids tommorrow so we wanted to pick up a few things for them.

This market is a world in itself. The sights and smells do your head in really. You can get anything from a snake kebab to barbequed cockroaches and stereo equipment. After paying far to much for balloons, T shirts and soccor balls we were wisked back to our hotel. Travelling in a Tuk tuk in Siem reap was one thing, here in Phnom Pehn it is just exillerating. There is just so much traffic here, all weaving in and out.