The New Chinese Hydroplant Stung Atay Road to Sihanoukville via Koh Kong

4 Mar

By Dean

“tomorrow night i want to be sitting on the beach drinking cocktails… whatever it takes, i don’t care if i have to ride for 12 hours. But it’s everyone individual decision, if you’re up for it – do it, otherwise take it easy and we’ll meet again in Sihanoukville in 2 days time”

Rule no 34 : you set your own pace in r4c.

It was a long dusty ride to get to Pramoy yesterday, most of which was spent fixing other bikes or waiting for other riders, and the smug messages of “i’m drinking beer already” while we repaired Sam’s puncture, followed by a late arrival and welcoming scene of the gang drinking beer after dinner with pretty dutch backpackers got me thinking…

Rule no 33 : what goes around comes around.

So we were up at 6am this morning, and the early bird gets the worm, so with 350km to ride we mounted up and left with whoever was ready at the time. This put us in 2 groups for most of today. Paul, Sam, Matt and I in the first group, and Dave, Gary and Laurence not far behind in the second.

We worked out quite early in the trip that small groups travel faster than one big one, as problems surface all day only a few people are delayed and inevitably they repass the rest when they are subsequently delayed, so when Paul had a flat leaving Pramoy we continued on without him assuming he’d catch us up again or ride with the second group instead.

Sam, Matt and I stopped for a feed of little bananas an hour into the trip, where Paul joined us 5 minutes later with some bad news. Laurence’s bike had seized. Oh dear. We were a long way from any repair shop in steep mountain roads so pushing or towing the bike wasn’t an option. I spoke to Dave on the phone briefly and discussed options for having it put on a truck to Koh Khong or Sihanoukville, before our group headed off again, figuring one of our bikes would stop sooner or later too.

Riding through the Cardamom mountains was really fun (for our group J), it was dense forest or jungle, with birds calling, little wooden bridges to cross and an endless well maintained dirt road built by the chinese hydro commissioning company all the way to Koh Khong.

The little bikes struggled to climb some of the hills at any speed, but down in first gear they were unstoppable (if miserably slow), and mile by mile we ground through the day arriving at the main paved road just to the east of Koh Khong at 12pm. We received a message from Dave that Laurence’s bike had been revived and they were moving again too – Good News!

We stopped after a few km for fuel and a bite to eat, and in this unlikely little roadside restaurant had one of the best meals of the trip. Chilli crab, stir fried pork and vegetables, steamed rice, iced coffee and a beer for good measure. We were happy.

Rule 88 : Dont judge a roadside restaurant on it’s looks.

It was 220km to a cocktail on the beach, and with 6 hours of daylight remaining, things were on track. My little Dailem had been running like a dream all day (get it?), assisted by my weight advantage i was roaring past the rest of the gang up the steep hills in the Cardamoms, and the rolling paved road along the coast from Koh Khong to highway 4 was more of the same. With the throttle held open all the way i eased away from Paul, Sam and Matt and enjoyed the ride – destination Mojito-ville.

I stopped after about an hour and a half, almost half way to my Mojito, and waited for the rest of catch up. Paul and Sam arrived after 5 or 10 mins but Matt was nowhere to be seen. I pulled out my phone to find a few messages from Matt…

“bike intermittently stopping, making my way to repairer”
“bike completely stopped”
“moving again”

I tried calling – no answer, but Matt was moving again so we decided to ride another 30 or 40km and then stop for lunch and fuel at the halfway point to give Matt a chance to rejoin us. When we stopped at a road side food stall the 4 messages from Matt were grim news.

“i have a puncture, please help”
“i have a puncture, please help”
“i have a puncture, please help”
“my coordinates are N???, E????”

I entered these on the GPS…

“shit, he’s 40km back down the road”

In retrospect we probably should have waited for Matt earlier, but you make decisions as you go and the awaiting Mojito may have clouded ours. I called Dave to find he was already leaving Koh Khong, 70km from where Matt was… we did the maths.

It would take team Dave an hour to get to Matt, but they were carrying a spare tube and a pump. On the other hand it would take us 40 mins to get to him, then another 45 to get the tyre out and to a repairer and back before we were moving again. Team Dave would have him moving faster than we could so it didn’t make any sense to turn back from there.

Plus there were Mojitos waiting!!

Matt wasn’t pleased at all, and i did empathise, but team Dave would be along soon enough so we pushed on to Sihanoukville.

The rest of the day was uneventful except for the torrential down pour an hour out of Mojito-ville, the visibility in the rain was appalling, and when i finally came out the other side and didn’t have Paul and Sam behind me it was an anxious wait by the side of the road for a few minutes until they arrived looking a little pale having just been run off the road by a Range Rover driver!

Rule 67 : Range Rover drivers are assholes all over the world.

The beer flowed fast when we arrived at 4:30pm, but we were really disappointed to hear that Team Dave still hadn’t gotten to Matt. Eventually team Dave got him going again, but it was too late in the day for them to make it to Sihanoukville in the daylight, and Gary’s headlight was out so they were stopping in a little town an hour away for the night.

The last sms from Matt read…

“we are in a crappy hotel with no electricity, there is barely any food here”

We really enjoyed the Mojitos J

We got an early start to try to make it to Mojitoville

 

Lots of elevation changes through the jungle

 

Packed lunch

 

One of the villages we crossed

 

One of the Good Bridges

 

Sometimes no bridge

 

No Bridge. No Problem.

 

Clearing land in the jungle

 

The Stung Atay Chinese built hydroelectric plant in the Koh Kong provence.

 

The site plan

 

Dusty dusty road

 

Dusty Dave after inhaling hours of red dust from the construction vehicles

 

Dusty Sam seems to be doing a bit better

 

Much later in the day Matt's bike kept stopping because of a loose spark plug. Here's his bush mechanic skills

 

Team Dave helping Matt out with a puncture repair

 

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