But we do have time for breakfast with Fi's colleague Anna and her family - parents Adrienne & Paul, and brother Jeremy. Great chatting with them and swapping notes on our talented daughters.
With minutes to spare we're on the bus to Siem Reap. I'm not unhappy to leave PP behind - my least favourite Asian city so far.
A couple of Indian girls in the adjacent seat ask to borrow my Lonely Planet Cambodia guide - they're off to view the Angkor temples too and need to do some preparation. Fi and I speculate on their accents - I pick English and Fi picks Australian. Fi's right - they're from Melbourne. We chat away for the rest of the trip, and arrange to meet up for dinner. Marcella is the older sister, and emigrated from Madras with her family when she was nine years old. Lucy, 10 years her junior, was born in Australia.
Siem Reap is a real party town with so many foreigners. Hotels and eateries everywhere, the latter concentrating in the aptly named Bar St. We meet at the Soup Dragon and the girls enjoy two for one cocktails as we decide to join forces and plan our Angkor strategy.
Fi and I are committing the ultimate sacrilege - we're only allowing one day to see the temples. Three days is recommended. But time is precious now as Laos and northern Thailand have to be squeezed in before Christmas.
So that gives us time for only four temples - Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, Preah Kahn and Bayon.
We discuss transport options. Angkor Wat is 7km north of town, and the other temples are on a circuit approximately 5km apart.
- Car or 4WD - too expensive and unnecessary
- Horse or elephant - impractical and expensive
- Hot air balloon - only provides an aerial view
- Helicoptor - as above with the added burden of the $1,000/hr cost
- Tour bus - spare me. I don't speak Japanese or German
- Tuk tuk or moto - a strong possibility, but a bit expensive
- Walking - cheap and cheerful, but the distances are too great
- Bicycles - the obvious choice!
I check out Fi's and mine - all is good. We go for a test ride - no probs. Marcella and Lucy look over the second tandem and go for a ride - they're not so confident and haven't quite mastered tandem riding. The seats are also wrong and can't be easily adjusted, so we swap bikes. More brake adjustments but in our hurry to get going I fail to check the chain tension on the second bike.
With Lucy on the back of my bike and Marcella on the back of Fi's we set off for Angkor - running a bit behind time now. About 3km up the road the loose chain for the rear pedaler on my bike slips off the sprocket and the power to weight ratio takes a serious dive as Lucy gets a free ride. I click in to grunt mode and we still make reasonable time.
Finally Angkor Wat comes in to view, and I marvel at the sheer scale of this walled and moated city (1,500m x 1300m) encasing a huge temple. The architecture, engineering and craftsmanship is astounding, particularly considering it was built in the 1100s. Over this period the Ankgor kingdom spread through most of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, and Angkor was a bustling metropolis of a million people while London was still a scrawny town of 50,000.
But part of me also thinks of the suffering of the labourers as they sweated away for nearly half a century to build a monument to megalomaniacal Suryavarman II, not content with just being King, but pretending to God-king status. And of course he had to better the temples of his predecessors.
Fi takes the style award, but my ears don't get burnt.
It's steep up there - suitable for God-kings only. Now cordoned off - likely for preservation of both the crumbling steps and tourists with mortal failings.
The scale and grandeur is counterpointed by incredible detail in the carvings. Every stone surface has a story to tell.
Within the outer walls. This place is huge.
It's getting close to lunch time now, so with three temples yet to see we head off to Ta Prohm. Quite a hike in the heat, not helped by ongoing chain problems.
Ta Prohm is the temple that reminds us that nature will quickly reclaim what man has carefully constructed if unmaintained.
Amazing seeing how the trees have started from a toehold and completely dominated and destroyed the temple.
On to Preah Kahn, and more bike problems. My bike now gets a punctured front tyre, and we have no tools or repair kit. As Marcella and Lucy have three days here, we split up and Fi and I carry on with the good bike, while Marcella and Lucy seek out a tuk tuk. As it happens, they just beat us to Preah Kahn.
Difficult to show in photos, Preah Kahn has incredible symmetry. Four processional walkways converge on a stupa in the dead centre of the temple. This eastern structure looks like it was imported from Athens.
On to Bayon in the late afternoon sun.
Hundreds of benignly smiling faces look down on you from every direction - the ultimate in quiet control and domination over one's subjects. There is no escape from the all-seeing eyes.
And my pick of the temples? Angkor Wat is majestic but doesn't quite do it for me. Similarly Preah Kahn. It's a toss up between Ta Prohm and Bayon, but in the end I think the symbolism of nature reasserting itself over man's futile attempts at vainglory put Ta Prohm at the top of my list.
But all in all a brilliant day - temples, our friendship with Marcella and Lucy, and our mechanical troubles combined to make it all highly memorable.
Fi and I fly back to Siem Reap on the tandem - leaving tuk tuks and motos in our wake. We arrive back at the bike hire place at the same time as Marcella and Lucy, and the four of us have a stand-up row with the owner of the bike rental place. We insist on a full refund for the faulty bike, he insists the charges stand as he now has to fix the puncture. The Mexican standoff lasts for 20 minutes until they finally agree on a compromise - a 50% discount. We all walk away happy and no one loses too much face.
Sad - tomorrow is my last day in Cambodia. But Laos beckons, and finally I'll be on equal footing with Fiona - she's never been there, and neither of us know the language. Should be a lot of fun.
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