Moto Tour Cambodia

I found a beach further south in Vietnam on an Island called Phu Quoc in the Gulf of Thailand. It was a paradise, a white sand beach and 8$ an night to stay on the beach I wasent complaining! I met some people who were also going to this Island that were on my tour of the Mekong Delta. We had supper together each night and played beach volleyball every night for the week that I stayed on the island. One was a doctor from Switzerland and one was a lady from Quebec who had sold everthing she owned and retired at 43 to travel the world, she owned a sail boat in the Carribian for 2 years and has been all over the world in the last 7 years.I got a flight off the island back to Saigon and did a bit more shopping before grabbing tne bus for Cambodia. After six weeks of Vietnam it was time to move on. I am now in Phnom Penn I have been here for a 5 days now. I have just returned from my first long moto tour of northern Cambodia. I was walking the streets on day and found this bike rental shop, he rented good cond 2003-4 Suzuki 400 Enduro bikes (basicaly a dirt bike legal for road use). The next day I was off to a town that was 270 km north called Kratie. I rode up to a town called Kampon Chamm and spent the night there, mostly because my bike that I thought was in great shape decided to blow a rear wheel bearing while I was on a ride through the middle of a jungle village 30 km from any highway or town. I managed to limp it back to town and found a local who had a small repair shop for my type of bike! Wow was I lucky I only had limited tools and no parts, and I really didnt want to cut my journey short! The the Khamer fellow ( who spoke no English) and me disassembled the rear axle and found the bearing had exploded and the ball bearings had fell into the hub of the wheel and had worn out the inside of the wheel, in short it was an ugly breakdown. This is probably the best country in the world to break down on a motorcycle, cause the Khamer people know all there is to know about how a moto works, and how to fix it fast. He had the old bearing punched out (by welding a stud to the old race and puching it out), a bearing that seemed to fit back in the wheel, and the wheel back on in about 25min. and it only cost 10 bucks! I set out the next day for Karatie. I could have took highway the entire way but I opted for the dirt road that followed the Mekong river north through villages where every time I stopped for a picture or for a drink childern and would swarm my bike and yell hello every time I drove past! The children really were amazing so happy, and they really lived so simple. I took a ferry at one point across the river and the men that were on the boat all squatted around and discussed my bike for about 30min. It was so funny the looks of amazement, or shock that I got as I drove through these small villages!I got a flat tire at one point and had to stop at a little "gas station". Their gas stations were a stand on the road with pepsi bottles and whiskey bottles full of gas, which was more like half gasoline and half kerosene, or paint thinner or whatever. This fella had a air compressor so I thought that will help, but I knew that there would be no English spoken here exept "Hullo!". I did have some tire irons Thank God so we had the tire off and the tube out quickly. The gast station owner quicky patched my tube and we threw it back in and back on the bike! The funniest part was the amount of spectators I seemed to have throughout this whole time. I swear that half the village had showed up to watch the unlucky Westerner attempt to change a tire! I got em laughing when I gave them my terrible Donald Duck impression! The rest of the trip was so scenic, the riverbanks had many rice fields that were sooooo green and palm trees overhanging the trails. Every 5 km or so I would see a large Bhuddist or Islamic temples, without fail, old ones and new ones being made. I never understood it, these people lived in such shambles but would give large sums of money to construct new temples every year.I made it to my destination finaly, and drove down to the little dock they had outside of town. Here I hopped a boat to see what I drove all the way up to see. In the Mekong river they have 75 fresh water dolphins, about 7 feet in length at least, that are hard to spot. Karatie is a sure fire place to see them and see them I did! We seen about 6 of them and some even came up for air about 10ft from the boat! I was impressed! Seen a great sunset and then headded back to town. I rode back to Phnum Penh today to finish my journey and it was beautifull but un eventfull! What a great 3 days off the tourist beaten track!