Bangkok to Cambodia
Yesterday I had one of the most dangerous riding experiences of my short riding career. I don’t think I was very well prepared for the drastic change in road conditions between Thailand and Cambodia, but i suppose the sights at the border led me someway along the path to forseeing the madness, by then it was a bit too late to turn back.
The border experience was pretty laid back, usually the bike pushes its way through the lines, with moto-driving officials keen to raise their status with the guy on the big bike. This was the first border at which I was asked for all of the documentation I conscientiously collected before departing Australia. Drivers license, vehicle ownership document, registration certificate, carnet, passport etc.
Into the Cambodian section of the checkpoint and on past the 200 hand-drawn carts full of what looked like hessian. The visa/entrance was very easy and after 10 minutes I headed to the customs building. Everyone I looked at pointed to upstairs, and heading upstairs I found a door marked “Administration” with noone in it. Asking some young guy who was also looking for The Administrator, I was informed that he would be back at 2:00pm (in 3 hours time), which would severely affect my planned Poi Pet to Pnom Penh hell-run planned for the afternoon. Luckily we caught him just before his lunch break and he gave us audience for a few moments.
The young guy and his mate, plus two others who were joking and laughing, immediately ran into the office, took out large reams of paper and began a stamp-a-thon with some rubber stamps that The Administrator must horde in his office. My customs experience was to a background of thump, thump-thump, thump thump!! of the guys, branding whatever important forms they were in charge of with whatever important seal the government of Cambodia deemed necessary. I like to think these guys were primary school teachers and The Administrator, at the customs checkpoint in Poi Pet, holds the only smiley-face stamp left in the whole of Cambodia.
The first thing The Administrator asks is “Do you have a Carnet”. The next thing he did was to take my Carnet and efficiently stamp it and fill in the details correctly, not once threatening to tear off the wrong slip or sign the wrong dotted line. I liked that very much and felt a bit upset that a lot of stuff has bee written about the Cambodians not knowing what to do with the Carnet. He was a wily chap, with a sneaky look. I caught him looking up at me with the severity of someone trying to work out if a person should be trusted. He asked me “Do you speak Russian”, to which I answered “no”, he then said that my middle name (Michael) was the same as Mikhael Gorbachev, once president of Russia and the guy who started the fall of the Soviet Union. I’m unsure whether or not The Administrator had particular leftist leanings, however his collection of books on economics and business seemed to hint otherwise. Perhaps he was trying to determine whether or not I was a dissident, a sympathiser or just someone with Russian-loving parents. I assured him I was none of the above. With a word and a glance down his nose, he reduced the volume of the stampers and similarly dismissed me from his office. I would have preferred to stay there for a bit, he seemed like one of those guys with some interesting stories to tell. On my way out I let him know that between Australia and here, he was the only customs official who knew what to do with a Carnet, which made him smile very broadly.
My aim was to get from Poi Pet to Pnom Penh before dark and it was midday already. I estimated the distance to be 400km and a maximum time before sunset of about 6 hours. The first road proved to be a mental transportation back two or more months to the unsealed roads of outback Queensland. Mainly potholed to hell with stretches of unsealed, churned gravel / clay. I let my tyres down and rode down the verge. The problem being that the bullock carts tend to stay on the verge. So I cut to the inside, the problem being the oncoming trucks drive straight down the centre. My average speed was reduced from 120km/hr on Thai roads to about 40km/hr.
From Bunchy Munchy (creative liberty with names), the road conditions improved and potholes seemed to be regularly repaired. My average speed increased to 100km/hr but the trouble didn’t end. In one day I have seen every single cliche seen by a Western tourist in regards to crazy Asian roads. I witnessed:
Trucks overloaded to bursting with rice, grain, people
A prison vehicle full of condemned Cambodians (heading god-knows where)
Toyota Hilux ute with at least 30 people in the back
Man on pushbike
Man on pushbike with wife
Man on pushbike with wife and child (weaving madly)
Child in pristine school uniform on pushbike 100 times too large (weaving madly)
Man on pushbike with bunch of sticks on head
Toothless granny on pushbike
Cows
Bullock carts
Strange directional tractor engine with articulated wagon
Chickens
Four schoolgirls on a scooter
One Lorry (the most rectangular vehicle on the road)
Hand-pulled cart
About 20 cars
The nature of these transportation variants is usually very unpredictable, the larger objects moving faster and generally staying on track, the smaller object moving slowly but liable to change direction in an instant. This reverses a few things so riding flat-out at an oncoming truck is relatively safe compared to riding flat-out up to a cyclist in order to overtake. Once in a small town along the way I almost hit a man with his daughter on a scooter. My new front tyre was the difference between life and death when I broke hard. They had simply swerved two-metres to the right, directly into my path as I approached behind. The second near-death experience was to spare the life of a family of chicks that had strayed onto the road. I screeched to a halt and watched the guy sitting by the side of the road shake his head as if “why would you bother stopping”.
I arrived in Pnom Penh just on dusk and all my nightmares of city traffic I’d expected to see in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur were realised. No streetlights, heavy smog, intense speed and a right-of-way awarded to size came down to a hair raising ride. Oh yeah, they ride on the opposite side of the road here too. I pretty much stuck to my now-ritual method of navigating a big city for the first time: drive directly into the centre, stop and then have a coffee, then find somewhere to stay. The longer you prolong it, the harder it seems to get.
So, the name Cambodian Highways Kill is appropriate as I’ve heard a couple of eye-witness accounts of serious accident on the road and from my experience yesterday, it doesn’t surprise me. Also, I saw a scooter rider (with girl side-saddle on back) very nearly die while riding into the guesthouse in Pnom Penh. I hope riding doesn’t ever get much harder than this. The funniest thing I experienced was a man coming up to me in the street and asking me if I wanted to shoot an AK47 at a bunch of chickens. I said no thanks. I wonder what he would have thought of me nearly dying trying not to hit the little chicks crossing the road.