SE ASIA ON A TANDEM

Day4 route map After another early night we were up before sunrise and on the road at first light. There was a beautiful sunrise and a lovely cooling breeze, both of which put us in the perfect mindset 🤩. Today was the last ride of this leg and only 39 miles so we were confident we'd nail it before the real heat of the day got to us.  Sunrise from the guesthouse balcony Getting ready to leave - chickens everywhere!  Just a few minutes into the ride we were routed onto a side road. We hesitated briefly and then decided to take it. That turned out to be a good decision as it led us over a beautiful old bridge - the only real tourist attraction in the area which we would have otherwise missed. We took the opportunity to stop, take some photos and have our takeaway breakfast - fruit and nuts and water 😂  The 12th century bridge at Kampong Kdei  We quickly rejoined the main road and set off at a fairly quick pace. We were definitely spurred on by...

  Day 3 cycle route I​ woke up feeling much better after a really good night's sleep. We headed down for breafast at 6am determined to make an early start but unfortunately the hotel staff had other ideas. Max went and packed the bikes while I ordered breakfast for the two of us. Unfortunately something got lost in translation though as only one breakfast appeared and, on closer inspection, it seemed to be a hybrid of both our orders 😂 Thankfully we managed to reorder without too much more confusion and soon enough we were on our way.   Setting off - feeling quite optimistic 😀 We'd agreed that our strategy for the day would be to make several short pitstops for ice cold drinks at the service stations en route. Our hope was that, taking into account the slightly earlier start and marginally lower mileage, provided we didn’t overheat too quickly, we could finish most, if not all, of the ride before the heat dragged us under. We've started transferring the ice from the dri...

Day​2 Cycle route We awoke early with good intentions of setting off early before the real heat of the day kicked in. The most adorable guesthouse puppy was full of energy and tried to follow us 🥰 . 100k would have probably been a bit too much for him though 😂. We made an early stop for breakfast at a nice roadside cafe. Unfortunately Max accidentally ordered offal for his breakfast 🤢 so we shared my fried pork with egg instead.

First day cycle route After a 6.30am breakfast at the hotel we were on the road by 7am "raring to go"!

Busy Phnom Penh The adventure began as soon as we arrived at Heathrow. The tandem created quite a stir at the check in desk and getting through security was no mean feat. Hats off to Max though for being completely unflappable and for convincing the man on the check-in desk that the bike box weighed less than our 40kg limit (according to the bathroom scales it weighed a bit more !). Checking in at Heathrow  We arrived safely in Phnom Penh only to discover that the bike was still stuck in Singapore! My hopes of an early escape were quickly dashed though when it arrived at the hotel the next day, delivered, would you believe, on the roof of a tuk tuk 🤣. The apple tag Max has fitted to the bike has already proved its worth 👍 We are staying in Phnom Penh for 10 days, allowing us to acclimatise to the heat and abit more wrist healing time for me. I've seen a really good physiotherapist a few times which has helped - his face was a picture though when Max told him he'd ...

After both quitting work and entering retirement we decided to broaden our horizons a bit by doing some travelling and at the same time escaping the worst of the British winter. We decided that our first travel adventure would be a 2,000 mile cycle (spread over 2.5 months) around SE Asia including Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.    Our planned route We started planning the trip in 2022 and I purchased on ebay a couple of 30 year old Dutch touring bikes for the bargain price of £125 each - fully equipped with touring panniers and brand new Schwalbe Marathon touring tyres. Bargain eBay touring bikes I was very pleased with my purchase and set about refurbishing the bikes ready for our trip. We took the refurbished bikes to Brittany for a test tour over the summer and they performed very well. The only negative was the weight of the bikes (19.5kg) as a modern touring bike should only weigh around 12kg. We also realised that we were carrying far too much stuff and would have...