will it ever stop?
By Rach, who really likes some solace now and then
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
It’s 3:41pm and Phnom Penh has me overwhelmed. I’m sitting on the curb of a non-stop intersection trying to capture the experience. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster that I have no control over. It would be nice to get off, but I can’t until the ride has finished.
A shack with trays of eggs piled from floor to low ceiling is just behind me.
A baby is being washed down from a bucket of cold water on the footpath.
Pyjama-clad middle aged women step behind me, teddy bears and yellow ducks waving at me from their outfits.
The incessant whir, hum, drone of traffic is punctuated by honking horns, beeping horns, blasting horns. I decide to count the time between beeps and honks and blasts. I don’t manage to get to two seconds, not in the five minute I try.
The highest-piled van I’ve yet seen passes. Its load on the roof more than doubles its height, and the back door is, of course, wide open, only just containing the luggage crammed inside.
A cart is pushed by, some meat slowly cooking on the little fire.
An old lady wearing a blue and gold sarong with a red and white checkered scarf piled on her head, struggles to pedal her equally old bike past me. We exchange smiles.
A young father pushing his toddler son in a metal cart now almost emptied of its coconuts, calls out. Have they been plying the streets all day? What will happen to his leftover fruit? Did he make enough money to support his family today? I can’t help but wonder.
I’m dragged out of my thoughts as a truck rumbles by. At least sixty people are wedged onto the tray. That’s a lot of people on any truck, and this is not a large one they are packed onto, brims of their hats touching, so closely they are standing to each other.
I switch to counting motorbikes for one minute. Guess how many!
68, not including the ones pulling carts or tuktuks. No wonder it feels busy! It just doesn’t stop. It’s hard to capture the buzz, the ongoingness.
Sitting on the side of the road has not rid me of my fan club – tuktuki drivers offer their services, and as I’m on my own, motorbike drivers do too. I wave my no thank you to yet another smiling driver eagerly seeking a fare. Quarter of an hour has passed, along with hundreds of bikes, a few cars and plenty of tuktuks and trucks. It’s time to head home to the constantly whirring fan and buzzing children. At least they will go to sleep tonight!
Tags: parenting, postcard: Cambodia, transport
rayres
What? No sign of the Economic Downturn? Just where is everyone going?
Must admit, the noise in Bangkok defeated the super-sophisticated programmes in my $5000 Hearing aids!
Did you get a picture of the overloaded truck?
[…] With double the population of New Zealand in this one urban metropolis, it hums. Bangkok was big, Phnom Penh never stopped, but this was BangPenh on […]