Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior in the classic sense.

We rode our bikes from Aranyaprathet to the border on some very nice paved roads. And then we got to the razor wire and mud roads. When you depart the Thai border, you're in a no man's land packed with casinos. Since gambling is illegal in Thailand, this is a hot tourist destination. Like a humid, muddy Vegas.

But there were several men from the Cambodian Cultural Affairs office who helped us fill out all of our paperwork and told us which lines to stand in for the fastest service and what to give to each station when clearing the Cambodian side. VERY helpful and friendly, so that was great. When we got to the Cambodian customs guy, he was very thorough and spoke some English. However, his English seemed to be limited to quotes from _Apocalypse Now_ and that was super creepy!

The road was unbelievably terrible beginning right away. It was a rocky dirt road covered in a super slick mud slime that smelled bad. Andrew's tires have some knobs to them, but mine are pretty much road tires only. With all my equipment on the back and unequal weight distribution, I was sliding all over the place and using all of my concentration not to get hit by any cars and more importantly, not to fall into that rancid mud.

Our tires kicked up a ton of mud and we were soon covered. But I didn't fall! After about a kilometer, it dried out and we were on a "regular" poorly maintained dirt road. We didn't stop to take any pictures because we were afraid we wouldn't be able to start pedaling again. And we didn't want to even step in that mud. Picture ops we missed: a hospital sign with a blue cross on it. Instead of the snake being coiled around the Staff of Asclepius, it was coiled around a martini glass. And a truck with rice sacks piled up 30ft high, and lots of people on top of that!

We went about 60 miles today in the heat and humidity today. It was very interesting to see the countryside, but we consumed prodigious quantities of water. Every time we stopped (once an hour) we were covered in sweat. I've never experienced anything like that before. When we were moving, the breeze was enough to keep us dryish. But when we stopped, we poured sweat. I don't think the pictures will do it justice.

Fortunately for us, almost 40miles of what we rode today was freshly paved. It made for much more pleasant riding and since the road was so wide, we could ride side-by-side.

We planned to ride half-way to Siemreab and then get a guest house for the night. We got there at about 5 just as it started to rain heavily (perfect timing!) and got a bite to eat from a little shack with flies all over everything. We picked the dish which contained the most peppers hoping it would kill anything living in there:) Time will tell.

We asked where to stay, and they said the closest place was 25km down the road. We asked if a taxi could take us, but they said there weren't any. So we ate an extra helping of rice, bought more water and decided to keep going before it got dark out. But then a taxi arrived and we negotiated to have him drive us all the way to Siemreab for $40 US. It was worth every penny:)

We skipped some terrible muddy sections of road, and missed the pouring rain. And we have the next two days to check out Angkor Wat (the eighth wonder of the world) before we catch the ferry to the Capital.

I ended up getting sunburned on my triceps (the only part of me not covered in mud) and on my back on one side through my tshirt:( We'll see how bad it is tomorrow.

Alright, I can barely keep typing. I'm off to bed!