February 26, 2020 to March 3, 2020
Siem Reap Days: Chilling and Regrouping
This town is an incredible amount of fun. It's hard to explain unless you've been here, but it's really a chill and party place. The locus of the fun is on Pub Street and I basically did the clubs every night. With a few 50 cent draft beers to get started on the pregame, it's cheaper than drinking water.
During the day, I ended up doing some volunteer teaching at an NGO, basically to train the teachers on the structure of how to do a math lesson. It felt like I was back in my professional element. Not getting paid for this didn't make any difference, it's just that I was back in a classroom. While I'm absolutely loving this extended cycle tour break in SE Asia, I'm not used to it. The uncertainty of how long it will last is making this a positive yet strange feeling.
Determined to follow through on making the most of this amazing opportunity, I did all my job search work at the pool. Job searching is full time work in itself and in these days of online portals you can do it on the road. I was soon hitting up dozens of schools and trying to target my search around Malaysia and Singapore. Talking to a really good friend, the same one I toured with back in July, he suggested this would be the best ticket.
Less than five minutes after sending out an application, the principal of one of the top schools I picked in Malaysia got back to me and wanted to set up an interview. This was a real breakthrough actually.
We'll see what happens of course, but the fact this took place was a big step forward and this really got the momentum going on sending out more applications. The hotel itself was pure bliss, the Apsara Dream. However I eventually changed to another one where the cycling couple Ashley and Paul I met earlier were staying because it was a better deal overall.
But as always happens, you move forward two steps and take one step back. For several nights I'd wake up in the middle of the night and wonder when is this whole thing going to be over with? I have to admit I wanted to get back to Shanghai and start teaching again and going back to normal life with fitness classes, tutoring and all that I've done for the past 18 years before. And of course with my fiancee there now too I wanted to get back. She had been stuck there ever since we left Vegas almost a month ago already and was in lockdown while I was at the pools. Now with me looking for jobs in Malaysia, this was presenting a major potential source of conflict.
But the reality is I just didn't know what to do. I did the best I could at the time. With the coronavirus and lockdowns in China, the rug had been pulled out from under me. Economic and social life in the city had been reduced to nothing. If I did fly back, I would be faced with long waits in the airport, temperature checks, registrations, and a mandatory two week quarantine stuck at home. No matter how much I was missing my former life, it wouldn't return.
[Update November 2022] All of that ended up being completely true except that there was a short period in 2020 and of 2021 where a shadow of the former life could be enjoyed in China. I did eventually fly back there and have regretted it ever since. As for the Malaysia job situation, read on to find out about that. Once 2022 came around, the situation in China got considerably worse than 2020 if that was even possible to fathom. It turns out I had made the wrong decision. This became clear when almost 3 years later I was still stuck in China and my father had passed away in Canada without my being able to see him before.
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With a Skype interview set up in a few days, I figured it best to bike out of Cambodia and back to Thailand in order to use reliable internet. The internet in Cambodia is not up to the task and I'd hate to be turned down for a job because of connection issues.
At the same time, the volunteer school in Siem Reap wanted me back to run the children's English club. This would delay things by a day on Monday but that is perfectly fine. Put all of this together, the plan was to do a long ride to Anlong Veng about 130 km. Then the next day, cross the border into Thailand's Surin province and find a coffee shop with decent internet in time for the interview. That was the plan forward and it was enough needed to get me motivated for the next steps.
Today's ride: 25 km (16 miles)
Total: 837 km (520 miles)
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