On-the-Road Tales

Nancy and I decided to go check out another town and headed to Battambang. There were no recommended busses – and when the locals tell you things like that, you tend to listen. We hired an aircon taxi for the 4 hour drive on the ‘dancing road’. Why do they call it that you ask? Because it is not really paved so you kind of bump around the vehicle during the trip! We only had a day or two of rain but the road was like a mudpie. The motorbikes were sliding all over the place, the trucks were bogged down and people were covered in a coffee coloured splatter. As we tranversing a bit with water filled rice patties on both sides, the car in front of us lost control and started spinning. He and we were lucky there was nothing coming and that he did not slide right down into the water. Our driver was a bit more cautious after that especially watching the trucks fishtail ahead.

The town did not turn out to be the ‘charming’ town we envisioned. There were no tuktuks so the transport to some of the temples outside town were via motorbike which Nancy was not too keen on trying 2 of us and a driver on a 100cc. We mulled about the place and decided to bail out the next morning. Prescott college, used to have a saying I liked, “Life is about the journey not the destination”. So we took that approach, satisfied with our scenery on the way up.

One of the awful legacies of Cambodia’s wartorn history is the landmines. Passing fields you see signs showing a person stepping on what appears to be a small raised bump with a big cross through it. Cambodia had 7 million landmines buried within its borders, 7 million! 25-35 people are killed each month by landmines. Another high number is maimed. Cambodia has the highest number of amputees in the world a result of these weapons. Much of the countryside is unusable because it has not yet been cleared. Farmers sometimes move in and start a farm thinking it is safe but when rainy season comes and the ground softens, the landmine is triggered. It is sick, for a country at peace, it is still suffering the consequences of the past. There is some sort of a group that is working on clearing and the number killed has been reduced from 10 years ago when there were 300 people killed every year. But it is a shame you can not let your children run free in the beautiful fields for fear of these monsters. While there was a treaty to ban the production of landmines, the 3 main producers China, Russia, and the US did not sign it. I am going to have to add Ban the Landmines campaigning to my other planned activism when I get home.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 3:42 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.