little river crossing the track turned
to hard packed clay and, combined
with light spattering’s of rain, gave it
an oil like surface, we had to go easy
on the throttle. The rain stopped and
we cut off into a new forest section
which we found on our last run; with
the constant development we have
to be on the lookout for new trails
all the time. Back on the loamy sin-
gle track we had a bit more grip and
picked up the pace. You couldn’t relax
for a minute as there were tree roots
littering the trails along with hidden
ruts created by Cambodia’s infamous
ox-carts. Scott had the first off of the
day after he lost the front on a corner,
soon followed by Ian who had a nasty
off due to a protruding log, but lucki-
ly fell into the grassy bank on his left
and not down the gulley to his right.
He didn’t escape unscathed though,
as he took a bash to the ribs which
he later found out were dislocated,
ouch! But he kept riding for the full
6 days; a true dirt biker: somehow
when you’re on the bike you just get
over the pain as the pure exhilaration
of the ride encompasses all… you feel
it the next morning though, and the
one after and the one after that …
After another rocky river cross-
ing, we had a great ride as the road
opened up a bit and we got on the
throttle. It was now Tim’s turn to
dump the bike. Well actually Ian did
that to avoid hitting Tim after he
went into a deceptively deep puddle
and over the bars … you couldn’t have
lined the bikes up better if you tried;
great evasive skills. After one smaller
river crossing, we rolled up to Pram-
oy for lunch. We were making good
time so we relaxed and after a good
feed sat back and watched the world
go by. The afternoons ride gave us
big windy red dirt roads that carved
through the mountains and a few
steep hill climbs that took us up to O
Soum village. We rocked in around
5pm with big grins on our faces and
watched the day end sipping some
nice cool beers still pumped from the
TRAVERSE
31
days riding. It turned out that every-
one got the crashes out of the way
today, as for the rest of the trip every-
one stayed upright.
Everyone was feeling a bit battered
and bruised after the previous day.
Today was a fun ride, but pretty easy
going as we took the Chinese road,
which for the most part was graded
red dirt roads, with some washed out
climbs and descents; very scenic with
some great views. After the third dam
there is a large river which we drove
through to cool off and got some great
photos. There was an option to go on
a more technical trail which would
have meant another late finish, but
the lads decided to take the easier
route which got us into Koh Kong
town just after lunch. We took advan-
tage of the welcome rest to catch up
on emails and do some work on the
bikes. The hotel was on the Koh Kong
estuary and there was a great restau-
rant with good food and coffee where
we chilled at for the rest of the day.
Day four. We had all been antici-
pating this day, being the most tech-
nical section of our journey. It can be
taxing enough in the dry season and
the fact that it had been raining non-
stop overnight would put all our skills
to the test. It was sunny when we left
Koh Kong; a good sign!? Hopefully
the trail would have a chance to dry
out a bit, but his was not to be. The
riding was easy going to begin with;
highway that led us to the turnoff to
Thma Bang village. We were on large
sweeping, red dirt logging roads un-
til we arrived at Thma Bang. Then
the road narrowed and we started to
climb as we entered the first bit of the
mountain. It decided to start raining
and the red clay road became so slip-
pery that we were crossing up in ruts
and driving sideways a lot of the time
as we made our way up & down some
fairly steep hills.
Soon we arrived in the sleepy lit-
tle village of Areng where there’s a
large river crossing. Due to the rain
it was questionable whether it was