Grasshopper Tours Partnership

Soksabike bicycle tour is a social enterprise doing a great action to remind Khmer people to look back into the past about their old transportation. These days, there are not many Khmer people interested in biking – most of them prefer motorbikes and cars. Because Cambodia is still coming off of a long period marked by civil war, materialism is now attractive to the feeling of Cambodians wanting to try something new and modernize.

Soksabike brings tourists to see local places and in that way reminds local people to look to foreigners who, despite coming from rich countries, still prefer bicycles. And Soksabike was known as a local educational tour through lots of positive guest feedback, and word of mouth.

Soksabike has been open almost two years and has co-operated with both Battambang youth and foreigner volunteers. For about six months, Soksabike has partnered with a bicycle tour company which is called Grasshopper Adventure Tour located in Seim Reap, Phnom Penh and around Southeast Asia. Grasshopper provides us four nice mountain bikes to use and other materials for repairing too, which are really helpful for our project to run the tour. Adam and Marie who are the managers of grasshopper tour said,

I had heard some excellent things about Soksabike from travelers who had visited Battambang. These travelers were older and very experienced travelers, and I have learned over the years to listen to these sorts of people the most. The strongest message that I learned from these people was that Soksabike was doing an excellent job of promoting grassroots, community tourism in a sustainable sense. This is something that I feel very strongly about and we try very hard, as a company to remember the principles of truly sustainable travel. Our guests may prefer to stay in more up-market hotels, but they are still here to see real Cambodian life and to interact and connect with Cambodian people and to learn about their lives.

I hope that our relationship with Soksabike will help us to stay connected to that important principle of sustainable, community focused tourism as we continue to grow and I hope that our experience in the tourism industry and specifically in cycling related tourism can be of value to Soksabike as it grows.

And Grasshopper Tours mentioned Soksabike in their feature in Phnom Penh Post News too.

Recently, Soksabike has been doing a great job with the cooperation; we take tours from Grasshopper Tours very often. And tour guide Sopheap, who is the most involved with Grasshopper Tours said,

Taking Grasshopper make me very happy. There are many reasons that make me really like Grasshopper, the tour looks very professional such as guide uniform, bicycle, car follow up, and many guests are bicycle experts.

And Chem who is the grasshopper tour guide also appreciated Soksabike tour too, he said that

Soksabike is a very educational local tour; he likes Soksabike, because a lot of local small business that I had known from Soksabike and environment look really enjoyable too.

He continued that,

Battambang countryside is really green, clean, and fresh.