Journey to the World

February 13, 2007

On the second day I planned renting a bicycle to tour the closer temple. Instead I’ve discovered the wonder called electric bicycle.

Electric Bicycle

The electric bicycle is capable of driving twenty kilometers in the speed of 30 to 40 km/h while only using the battery. You can prolong battery life by using your feet just like with regular bicycle. The extra bonus is you don’t have to pay for fuel or electricity.

Nearby many of the closer temples are special electric stations where you can get a fresh battery replacement for free. It’s only useful for the temples area. The price for this vehicle is $4 USD a day. You must use the electricity wisely, because it’s not nice to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with a drained battery.

Second Day – Angkor Wat

On the second day I toured the closer temple radius. I started at the biggest and most famous temple of them all – Angkor Wat. Inside the temples every picture is worth more than one thousand words so I will stop writing.

Wild Monkeys in Angkor Wat

From the huge temple, Angkor Wat, I continued with the road on my electric bicycle. I met on the road a group of wild monkeys living in the area. The freedom of the bicycle played a big role here and so I parked by the side of the road. I approached one of the monkeys who was a very big and fat one compared to the others. He sat on the ground doing nothing. It seems that he didn’t mind I came closer to him. After a series of photographs, I tried to pet it. In response he made a weird face but I ignored it. After a few minutes I took his hand, an action that caused the monkey react by opening his mouth and make an awkward noise. The fat monkey calmed down after a couple of seconds. I tried to grab his hand again, but he got really angry and started to chase me. I didn’t know whether to start laughing or to run away as fast as I can before the monkey shows me what his teeth are capable of. Eventually he calmed down and I walked to the other monkeys to take more photographs.

Twenty minutes later a minivan stopped by. A Japanese family came out of it with small children. They didn’t touch the monkeys, but got a little bit too close to them. They threw a water bottle to one of them, but he couldn’t open it. The heavy heat in this area effects the monkeys and so water become a popular necessity.

The monkeys didn’t succeed in opening the bottle. I took the bottle, opened it and poured the water to a half coconut which was laying on the ground. The big fat monkey jumped on the bargain, drank all water and didn’t leave anything for his friends.

Bayon Temple – The faces temple

I kept riding on the same road and arrived at Bayon Temple. It was special because of the huge face sculptured in its walls. Huge statues of smiling faces were everywhere. A group of Cambdoians dressed with traditional clothes waited inside the temple and offered visitors to take a photograph with them for a small fee.

More Temples

I kept riding until I reached a large wall and more temples around it. It was already late, the stands are closing before sunset. The entire site closes after sunset so there will be no tourists inside when it’s dark.

Siem Reap Night Market

In the night market I found a good street restaurant that offers excellent shakes, especially the one made of mango and banana. In contradiction to Thailand, in Cambodia is yellow and therefore edible. I had an arrangement with the place from which I rented my bicycle to let me keep them at night while obligating to rent them again the next day. The company responsible for the electric bicycle is operating from the temples. They’re limiting the rent time until 8:00 PM. After this time you must bring it back to the shop. There are a lot of kids around the night market at night, some of them are family members of the restaurant owners. One of them discovered the new toy and started playing with the pedals, the lights and the honk. I had to peel him from the bicycle when I wanted to go.

In the first picture you can see the restaurant I was eating in. It is one restaurant before the road is turning left. A nice man called Ret operates it or almost two years. The food is very cheap and the shakes are great. It’s worth checking.

This article was originally written in Hebrew. It was translated to English at a later time.

 

This article was published at 13-02-2007 Time: 12:26 and belongs to categories Electric Bicycle, Far East Travel Journal 2007, Angkor Wat, Temples, Siem Reap, Monkeys, Cambodia. You can follow comments to this article using the feed RSS 2.0. You can post a comment, or trackback from your website.