Tico tour to takeo

[marklatham]

Yesterday I gave the tico her head and along with another brave board member soared down the highway towards takeo.
I was armed with two books,ray zepps from 1994 and fireman matt jacobsen's adventures in cambodia from 2004.
We successfully missed the first turnoff to the nearer temple,tonle bati and avoided the zoo(I always avoid zoos) but after about 50ks turned off the bitumen toward phnom chisor.
The fireman's directions were wrong,if one had turned left as directed we would probably still be driving around in the bush.
The temple car park was deserted save for a local band of young ruffians posing as tour guides and a very helpful man posing as a car park attendant who insisted the tico be put under the over hanging roof of a nearby building.
We ascended the 500 plus stairs to the temple at the peak accompianed by our youthful hosts who coped rather better with the climb that the two fifty plus barangs.The view from the top is magnificent,rivers and lakes are everywhere stretching down to the viet border.There is another phnom adjacent as well.
It was a smoky,hazy day with later rain threatening so visibility was restricted but the countryside is beautiful.One can imagine that the whole area down through to vietnam is one vast lake in the wet.
The temple itself is 11th century,constructed of both stone blocks and typically khmer small red brick.Unusually many of the openings in the perimeter walls had stone sections beautifully mitred on all four corners,something i have not seen before.
They must have had all the fussy old buggers doing this,the young blokes just whack a flat stone across the top and bottom of the opening-she'll be right for a thousand years or so.
There are also more modern monastery buildings around where a contingent of monks live.
Apparently many khmers visit in the weekend to be doused with the lucky waters from the cement pond at the summit.
An official from the tourism department appeared and demanded two dollars each from us,he was dismissed with a flea in his ear and a dollar each.
After descending i offered the car park attendant a thousand riel,he wanted a dollar so I gave another thousand.Hell it's cheaper parking on 136 outside sharkeys!
My navigator pulled out the fireman's book as the powerful 800cc donk roared into life,firing on all three as usual.We were off to the next stop angkor borei and thence phnom da,one of the two oldest sites in SE asia.
The next intersection at the school was reached and once again the book let us down-christ knows how this guy ever found the bloody fire!
If we had turned right we would have been rotting in a vietnamese jail for eternity.Taking the correct turn, left we were on a bumpy,corrugated road that later turned into newly laid roadbase being spread by a small bulldozer-progress!
After 20 ks or so we reached angkor borei(We think) and soon after the road ran out and after asking directions for phnom da we dropped down onto a sandy,rutted track that was obviously a lake in the wet.More directions shortly afterwards saw us do a U turn and decide that discretion was the better part of valour even when driving an all terrain vehicle like a tico and we headed for takeo,back the way we had come.
The fireman's book had directions for the back way to takeo but as neither of us wanted to spend the rest of our lives lost in the cambodian bush we demurred.
Takeo town is a vast,tacky place apart from the rather attractive old quarter beside the lake.There is one concrete public building from the sixties showing many bullet scars and numerous shophouses that are absolute renovators delights lacking walls and floors upstairs.
A very generous chap with a dinghy and outboard offered to take us down the long,straight canal to angkor borei for a measly thirty dollars but we decided that lunch and a couple of beers would be better value.
After thrashing about on the backroads all morning the ashphalt highway back to PP was a delighful 75 k jaunt in the rain and we were home by 3.30.The bloody navigator snored most of the way home,lucky we wern't returning from a sortie over berlin.
Once again the tico performed like a dream on a cupful of juice and phnom da will have to wait for another day.
_________________
Love is a warm Tickle.

[Master Donut Baker]

mark, did yo take photos at places you visited?

[jm]

Please, Mark, no pictures of the snoring navigator...

[hanky]

[marklatham]

I did take pictures but my pictures are always crap.The navigator had the flash camera and his pictures are probably worth viewing.
_________________
Love is a warm Tickle.

[jm]

[Chuangt2u]

[jm]

[Master Donut Baker]

is that mark's car?

who(manufacturer) made tico?

[wasabi]

Hey Mark,

I really enjoyed reading your Tico Adventure. I made the same short trip a while back but I didn't have the luxury of driving my own Daewoo Tico. When they first produced those cars in Korea, the government gave tax breaks, gas discounts, and a bunch of other gov. sponsored perks. I think they also registered the car like a "motorcycle" . . .

Where next?

[marklatham]

Where's next?
I have the ray zepp book from 1994 which is good reading and encouraged me to visit koh okneatai again to find the nice khmer restauarant and small zoo where the tourist boats stop.
Unfortunately ray seems to have the fireman's sense of direction and the island he refers to as mehkong island or okneatai is actually koh daik or silk island-I think.
I will make that the next trip once I find where the ferry leaves from for koh daik.
Okneatai is a lovely place,an undiscovered gem but whether the smaller silk island is as nice I don't know.
My other destination is kirirom national park,beyond kompong speu.I hate that stretch of road out past the airport but the altitude and pine forests sound great up there.I have always thought that mountain areas in the tropics were the nicest part of the world.
_________________
Love is a warm Tickle.

[Master Donut Baker]

where is the beef? i mean where are the pics of that said trip of yours?

[elreydelosmonos]

Mark, your car sucks. You need to get a man's ride, like an old 'Stang er something.
_________________
"If you have a rifle, and you line up back-site, fore-site, and Frenchman, pull the trigger, the world is suddenly a better place." Bernard Cornwell

[jm]

[Guest]

Mark,
Loving the Tico stories, keep them up. You should read this blog if you don't already ......

http://andybrouwer.co.uk/blog/


k

ps; what happened to our beer last night ? The Tsing Tao was iced and the missus cooked up for you and everything !