Motorbike Sir?

As I was walking towards the guesthouse that I intended to stay at on the lake tonight here in Phnom Penh, I came across a large crowd gathered in the middle of the street. I use the word ‘street’ in a very generous way, as many of the side streets here in Cambodia are a clay-mud surface punctuated by water filled potholes. In the middle of the crowd, a police officer was shouting at a teenage girl who was cowering behind a middle-aged man. It seemed that the policeman wanted her to get on his motorbike, though she was trying in vain to avoid going anywhere near it. Finally the policeman grabbed the girl by the hair and attempted to pull her towards to motorbike. She resisted with all her strength for a few seconds before the policeman turned, hit her in the head, and kicked her in the stomach. She fell to the ground and into the arms of some spectators.

I decided I had seen enough of the spectacle so I walked on and checked into my room. I later asked a guesthouse worker what the commotion was about; he said that the policeman was actually the girl’s father, and that she had been staying at her lover’s family’s house against her family’s wishes. Her father found out where she was and was determined to bring her home.

During my first day here in Phnom Penh (10 days ago), I was sitting in an internet cafe when a ruckus broke out on the street. Naturally I walked out to see what the commotion was about. About a block away a large crowd was gathering and more people from the vicinity were running to get a closer look at the action. From my vantage point, the only thing I saw was one man land a flying kick into the side of another man’s head. Not wanting to get involved in the melee, I went back inside and continued writing emails. Later I spoke with a moto driver and asked him about the earlier altercation. He said that a man tried to rob a woman and ended up getting his ass beat by some helpful bystanders.

I begin my Cambodian tales with two examples of some of the violence that I have witnessed here. I am not trying to imply that these are normal street scenes, though this country has seen a fair share of violence over the past 20 years, and onlookers have seemed to accept it as apart of normal life. The US sees its fair share of violence (probably more than here in Cambodia), though I rarely see it in the middle of the street.

——

In Phnom Penh I stayed with my friend Andrew who I met in Bangkok at the start of my voyage. He has been living here and teaching English for a few months now and I was excited to see what the teaching life was like here in Cambodia. He seems to love it here, and after nearly two weeks, I can see why. The people are nice and friendly, the countryside is beautiful, and this place is crazy.

I came to Cambodia by boat. I enjoy entering a new country by water – it gives the voyage a bit more of an edge. It also makes going back much harder – unless you enjoy swimming in the pristine, latte-colored waters of the Mekong. The border crossing was fairly uneventful, although I did find the bridge we had to walk across amusing.

Phnom Penh is a really nice, vibrant town. It has a large population of NGO workers, diplomats, expats, and travelers, so there are some nice restaurants and bars. After one month of eating nothing but Vietnamese food, I was craving some western fare, so we headed to a backpacker restaurant where I happily devoured steak served with gravy and mashed potatoes. The next few nights we hit the town, sampling the local brews and trying to avoid the bargirls hopped up on Jaba – a local drug related to methamphetamine. We had a blast, though my wallet took a bit of a hit. I explored the city for a few days but also spent a bit of time watching some western TV. It was a nice break from traveling.

Having the luxury of time and wanting to get away from the tourist trail, I decided to head off to Rattanakari province – the far northeast of Cambodia. My journey took three days – a bus to Kampon Cham, a 10 hr. boat ride up the Mekong to Strung Treng (near the Laos border), and finally a 8 hr. drive to Ban Lung. The first two days of travel were pleasant. In Kampon Cham I hired a local moto driver to show me some Buddhist temples and Angkor period ruins. I later bought him a fish soup dinner as we discussed his future plans. The average yearly salary for a Cambodian is around $300. Many Cambodians have succeeded in creating a fair bit of wealth for their family although the vast majority live in poverty. Cambodia is not unique in terms of a vast income discrepancy (especially here in southeast Asia) between people though I have for some reason noticed it here more.

My pickup truck ride from Strung Treng to Ban Lung was my introduction to the mud of Cambodia, something of which I would become very acquainted with over the next few days. The mud here is a reddish-brown color, is very slippery, and forever stains any clothing it touches. For the drive up toe Ban Lung, I expected a decent four-wheel drive Toyota to take us over what I knew would be terrible roads. In the morning, a grossly overloaded two-wheel drive pickup showed up with bald tires. The driver looked confident, so I hopped in the back and we set out on the journey.

After the usual routine of driving around town for 30 minutes looking for more people to pick up, we started out down the road. A short while later, the driver pulled over, began to jack up the back of the truck and take off one of the rear tires. I happened to be sitting on a pair of nice knobby tires in the bed of the truck, so naturally I assumed he was swapping the tires. To my dismay, he not only broke off one of the five lug nuts, but removed the cover of the drum brake exposing a non-functional brake inside. I think he removed the cover because it was rubbing on something. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned that we had no rear brakes

Satisfied that we were ready to continue, we headed back out again. The road soon disintegrated into massive, water-filled craters that would occasionally launch me airborne from my precarious seat between some tires and a motorbike. A few hours later we stopped again. This time, the driver brought out some chains to attach to the rear wheels for added traction. For those of you who have ever been to the mountains in the winter, you might be familiar with snow chains. These have obviously never reached this part of the world for our driver had just one small piece of chain that he attached to the tire, meaning that we only got added traction once every tire rotation. Again brimming with confidence, our driver motioned us back in the car and we set out.

We quickly hit a particularly bad stretch of road – a muddy, slippery hill which took whatever pride our truck had. The driver tried in vain to keep us in the middle of the road, but we slid backwards down the hill and towards the edge. We were stuck. The driver hopped out of his seat and dove under the pickup wielding a large machete. He soon emerged with a massive rock. With us pushing on the back, tires spinning and mud flying, we managed to get the pickup lodged even farther off the road. In what I took to be curses, the driver ran off down the road muttering something to himself, leaving us to watch as other vehicles navigated the stretch of road without incident.

Ten minutes later our driver returned with some sort of four-wheel drive jeep. I laughed at the contraption, and laughed even harder when the driver of the jeep got himself stuck while trying to turn around. His immobility was only temporary, and he soon had a chain running between the two trucks with engines roaring, wheels spinning, and mud flying.

After 20 minutes or so of gross physical abuse of their respective vehicles, we were up the hill and free, though I noticed that our radiator was pissing out coolant. The driver opened up the hood and removed the radiator – at the bottom was a sizable crack. I thought we were done for and that I would be sleeping in the back of the truck all night, but the ingenuity of the Cambodians never ceases to amaze me. The driver pulled out a cigarette, tore off the filter and stuck pieces of it in the crack then dripped some sort of chemical adhesive over the patch. He dumped some water in the radiator and to my surprise, none leaked out. He installed the radiator back in the truck and we headed off to Ban Lung. The rest of the journey passed without incident.

Tags: Cambodia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 at 8:19 am and is filed under Cambodia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.