Today we decided to cross one more thing of Mrs. Columbus’ list – riding bicycles around the city. On the surface this would seem like a fairly straight forward activity as we have seen lots of people doing it over the last few days, and it seems like every guesthouse, tour shop, and restaurant has bikes for rent. As it turns out renting a bike that is likely worth about $50US is more complicated than renting a car where we are from!
We wander up the street from our hotel to select a place to rent the bikes from and after looking at a few we pick one that has bikes available, and at reasonable price (20,000 kip – about $2.50 for the day). Then it gets tricky – they will not rent the bikes out without us leaving our passport for security. I have a lot of things that I would be prepared to hand over in a jam or for some sort of security, in fact I could just leave a deposit equal to it’s value, but we are pretty protective of our passports because losing one would be a major headache in terms of getting home, so that’s a no-go for us.
At any rate, we walk away and decide to try another shop hoping that they will have some different rules, but again are denied without leaving our passport. Finally, we circle back to the first shop and cajole them into accepting our driver’s license as a deposit, but of course that is back at the hotel so after a quick walk back for that we are finally able to get our bikes for the afternoon after about an hour of fussing around.
Most of the bikes around here are pretty much the same, sort of like what we might call a cruiser back home now that they are cool, or when I was a kid we called them old people bikes 🙂 A key difference though is that here they are not very adjustable, and I find myself riding around on a bike that was perhaps sized for someone who was 12. We decide to just make the best of it as I doubt they are returning our money, and off we ride, me getting much more acquainted with my knees because in the crouched position they are now much closer to my head.
Thankfully there are two things working in our favor: 1) the skies are a bit overcast so the hot sun is not blazing down on our backs (even though it is still 35C out, it is nice to not have the direct sun), and 2) most of the town is quite flat so the riding on a bike with only one gear is made a little easier without having to go up a bunch of hills. As I soon discover that the brakes on my bike were possibly world war 2 surplus I am even more thankful for the 2nd point because I only need to rely on them a couple of times during the day.
After a few hours on the bikes my body starts to remind me that I am not a teenager anymore, and that if I don’t call it a day soon there will be serious repercussions in the morning, so we head back to the place we rented them from and then spend the rest of the afternoon walking around some of the streets and lanes of the old city. After a bite to eat we stop in for a massage – because we can – and then back to our room for the night.
Next time – yes there will likely be a next time – we will look for bikes in a little better condition, and properly sized! I think there is a lot you could explore in a place like this if you had the right equipment.