Why an electric bike
I added electric bikes for the one thing an engine can't give: silence.
I have guided people through Angkor since 2013. The first years were Vespas, then Jeeps. Both are wonderful, but an engine could never give me one thing: the silence of the forest.
You notice that quiet most in the early morning, before the buses arrive: birds in the canopy, the creak of old stone in the heat. No engine takes you through that. A regular bicycle can, but Cambodia's heat makes a full day of pedalling brutal, and most independent cyclists spend the last hours just trying to get back to their hotel.
No engine can give you the silence of the Angkor forest. The e-bike can.
The first time I rode a Giant e-bike on the trail behind Angkor Thom, I understood. The pedal-assist is almost completely silent, and it does the climbing, so you reach the last temple as fresh as the first.
I grew up inside the walls of Angkor. The e-bike is, genuinely, the closest a guest can get to the Angkor I knew as a child: quiet, at human pace, on the back trails most visitors never see.
Akim Ly · Founder, Adventures Cambodia · Read Akim's full story →