National Highway 6: Cambodia's Autobahn.
I was sitting at the bar last night with Joe and a Belgian fellow, sipping our beers slowly and smoking Ara cigarettes, when conversation turned to Cambodian driving. Cambodian driving is quite a thing to behold, as here it is not so much about the journey, it is all about the destination.
There are four ways of getting around. A moto, a minivan, a car-taxi, or a bus. Bicycles equal death over long distances. Now, I have already described the inventive uses these clever little people put their motos to; with pigs and birds lashed in unexpected places, three or four men hugging eachother as they speed along, nonchalent expressions on their faces, but I feel it is time to go into these other methods of transportation.
The minivans, like the one I saw crashed into a tree and spattered with human gore on my first day here, are like high-speed sardine cans. There are no seatbelts, as the concept of "One person, one seat" is alien here. Two, perhaps even three small Khmers to a seat, squashed in and staring out of the windows with the wide, empty eyes, accepting death. The bus is not much better, with plastic stools and chairs filling the aisles between the seats, but at least then a westerner can buy a ticket for his own.
The car taxis, however, are like a combination of the two. The driver's seat is shared by the driver and a passenger, the space between often occupied as well, with one more on the other side. Cars are imported from both Australia and America, so the driver's side often changed depending on where the car came from. The back seat is worse, filled with as many people as can fit. Often the only way around this is to pay for more seats, so as to accomodate ones appendages for long journeys. One one occasion, coming back from Phnom Pehn late at night, Steven and I were crushed in the back seat of one such car, me half hanging out of the window with a strained expression, sucking on a cigarette as if it contained some form of antidote, while Steven tried desperately to reason with his adament travelling companions, who appeared to be demanding that the "Tome! Tome American!" shrink so as to take up less space.
Now, this would not be so bad (well, it would), if the roads were not shot to hell, devoid of speed limits, and the side of the road driven on more a matter of courtesy than legality. Joe, proprieter of the Mekong Crossing put it best: "These fucking monkeys... they're used to driving slow on shitty backwater roads in bumfuck nowhere, so once they get one something smooth, they drive like fucking animals."
The small hairs on the back of one's neck tend to rise as one car after another hurtles by with a sound like a sonic boom, passing so close that the rush of air nearly knocks the cigarette from one's hand. You see, the Khmer people have not yet grasped the concept of safe and comfortable transport. Sitting atop trucks hauling shipments of wood, clinging to the sides of overloaded and ancient VW minivans, all that matters is getting as many people where they are going as fast as possible, and getting paid for it. Death is a risk everyone here is willing to take.
That said, the views are quite incredible. From my seat, leaning out of the window and smoking like a chimney, I could see a blood red and enormous sun set over black palm trees, painting the rice fields crimson. It looked, as Steven put it so poetically, like the burning end of God's own cigarette.
Beautiful, bloody, and dangerous. This country has seduced me.
There are four ways of getting around. A moto, a minivan, a car-taxi, or a bus. Bicycles equal death over long distances. Now, I have already described the inventive uses these clever little people put their motos to; with pigs and birds lashed in unexpected places, three or four men hugging eachother as they speed along, nonchalent expressions on their faces, but I feel it is time to go into these other methods of transportation.
The minivans, like the one I saw crashed into a tree and spattered with human gore on my first day here, are like high-speed sardine cans. There are no seatbelts, as the concept of "One person, one seat" is alien here. Two, perhaps even three small Khmers to a seat, squashed in and staring out of the windows with the wide, empty eyes, accepting death. The bus is not much better, with plastic stools and chairs filling the aisles between the seats, but at least then a westerner can buy a ticket for his own.
The car taxis, however, are like a combination of the two. The driver's seat is shared by the driver and a passenger, the space between often occupied as well, with one more on the other side. Cars are imported from both Australia and America, so the driver's side often changed depending on where the car came from. The back seat is worse, filled with as many people as can fit. Often the only way around this is to pay for more seats, so as to accomodate ones appendages for long journeys. One one occasion, coming back from Phnom Pehn late at night, Steven and I were crushed in the back seat of one such car, me half hanging out of the window with a strained expression, sucking on a cigarette as if it contained some form of antidote, while Steven tried desperately to reason with his adament travelling companions, who appeared to be demanding that the "Tome! Tome American!" shrink so as to take up less space.
Now, this would not be so bad (well, it would), if the roads were not shot to hell, devoid of speed limits, and the side of the road driven on more a matter of courtesy than legality. Joe, proprieter of the Mekong Crossing put it best: "These fucking monkeys... they're used to driving slow on shitty backwater roads in bumfuck nowhere, so once they get one something smooth, they drive like fucking animals."
The small hairs on the back of one's neck tend to rise as one car after another hurtles by with a sound like a sonic boom, passing so close that the rush of air nearly knocks the cigarette from one's hand. You see, the Khmer people have not yet grasped the concept of safe and comfortable transport. Sitting atop trucks hauling shipments of wood, clinging to the sides of overloaded and ancient VW minivans, all that matters is getting as many people where they are going as fast as possible, and getting paid for it. Death is a risk everyone here is willing to take.
That said, the views are quite incredible. From my seat, leaning out of the window and smoking like a chimney, I could see a blood red and enormous sun set over black palm trees, painting the rice fields crimson. It looked, as Steven put it so poetically, like the burning end of God's own cigarette.
Beautiful, bloody, and dangerous. This country has seduced me.