Browny-White Woman on Pink Bicycle

Leo finally won his Oscar (well done, Leo!) and I finally got on a bike in the real world.

OK, so many of you might be thinking, ‘You rode a bike? Big frickin’ deal, my six year old rides a bike!’

Artist's impression of me & my bike (source)

I used to like using the spinning bikes at the gym, and imagining I was racing down sun-lit country lanes, but the thought of riding on a real bike on real roads terrified me, probably because I’m from England and we treat cyclists there like we treat mosquitoes on holiday; like an irritating, always-there, tedious fact of life.

If you never did things you were afraid of, though, you'd just spend your entire life indoors, wearing a tin-foil hat and storing your pee in plastic bottles. With this thought in mind, I channeled my inner Peggy Blomquist (without needlessly murdering anyone, of course,) and headed out on the pink mountain bike rented from our apartment hosts.

'I'm actualised, you know!' (source)

Cycling here in Siem Reap is actually less like Russian Roulette than I thought it would be. For a start, the landscape is very flat, so there are no hills to navigate.

Secondly, the traffic moves pretty slowly, and there’s very few boy and girl racers zipping around, which right away makes the road a safer place.

There’s plenty of 4x4s, but they don’t think they own the road, and don’t plough thoughtlessly across roundabouts and junctions, or try and face down other drivers in the manner of a Clint Eastwood cowboy.

They drive on the right here in Cambodia, but the ‘give way’ rule seems to simply mean people take it in turns to flow in the rest of the traffic. As you approach a crossroads, you simply slow down and move across; everyone else does the same thing, and no-one crashes into anyone else.

Someone about to overtake you will beep to let you know they are there.

The only accident we have seen involved a Westerner on a motorbike. Taking a right turn, he cut straight across a cyclist, knocking him off his bike. The cyclist seemed to somersault in the air, before landing, luckily, on his arse. By the time the Western guy had realised what had happened, and pulled over the side of the road, the Cambodian cyclist was up and off, with no apparent injuries.

That said, I’m still very cautious; I’ve just about mastered the art of looking over my shoulder before making a turn or moving out without madly wobbling about, and I find that aggressively riding in the middle of the road is a far safer tactic than clinging to the kerb too tightly.

I’ve now cycled into town and back twice and done one dirt-track ride. The dirt track ride was the most fun, because every child you drove past would play the ‘HELLO!’ game and that never gets boring.

I’m actually enjoying it, and thinking, ‘Jeez, if riding at home was this easy, I would do it all the time!’

'This is for you and the bike, kid,' (source)