Famo Adventure Motorcycling Guide

I seem to have had a few humbling experiences in the last couple of weeks and my time in Cambodia ended pretty abruptly, sad to say it.

A Petrol Station

Although the roads in Cambodia are horrible, the people are wonderful, except of course the odd person who tries to sell me something I don’t need. This only really worries me on bad mornings, when I’ve ridden a long distance the day before and I’m a little bit tired and angsty. It’s just a bit of mild frustration at the lift offers when all I want to do is walk. I feel bad, but sometimes after the hundredth offer for a ride on a pushcart, I could scream.

Head down and slightly embarrassed, I try to ignore the calls as I walk towards the market. I haven’t yet worked out a way to respond to every single offer with a polite and friendly “no thank you” and I remind myself that this is the only thing a Cambodian taxi driver has to make a living, and every dollar I might spend on catching a lift is there for the taking. It can sometimes make genuine interaction seem dubious, which is definitely paranoia on my part, imagining I can see a glint of ‘I want your money’ in the eyes of every driver. Walking down the street, a hundred metres in front of me, a tuk-tuk driver raises a hand (not unlike a Sydneysider bidding at an auction in Vaucluse). Immediately the other drivers in the area all raise their hands, and I still have eighty metres to walk with five people waving at me calling out “pick me, pick me”. I start thinking it’s become a game to see who can pick me up first, and I feel like I should take more tuk-tuks around the place just for the hell of it. I’d love to jump in one and say “take me to Brisbane”, but the drivers have mouths to feed, and I have to meet my parents who have just arrived in Pnom Penh as part of their holiday in Southeast Asia.

Planning a trip to the sights around Pnom Penh, I’m surprised to see that my mum has found a way to adapt her years of primary school teaching to the task of ‘tuk-tuk driver negotiation’. Goes a little something like this:

Mum and Dad get out of the bus, immediately surrounded by a handful of tuk-tuk drivers:

All Tuk-tuk drivers (hands in air): Pick me, pick me, I was here first!
Mum: Okay, I’m NOT going to choose ANYONE until there is silence
(tuk-tuk drivers immediately shut-up, all looking at mum and bobbing up and down on their toes. Some have their hands over their mouths)
Mum: Right, who was here FIRST?
(hands go up, grunting noises)
Tuk-tuk driver: Me, I was here fi-
Mum: Silence!
(hands pumping the air, more grunting noises)
Mum: Okay, now who was here LAST?
(everyone is silent, look around at each other, one tuk-tuk driver puts his hand up)
Tuk-tuk driver: me
Mum: You can be our driver then
(entire crowd groans)

I stand there and look on as my mother goes into teacher mode… The tuk-tuk pulls away and I’m hanging out, looking back, shaking my head and saying “sorry guys, she’s been doing it to me for about fifteen years now”.

The first day I arrive I do a stupid thing and decide to sort out some of my money in front of the national museum. I waddle up to the outside fence of the main monument in the centre of Pnom Penh, reach into my money belt and start flicking through the bills to work out how much I’ll need for the day. Why I didn’t do this in the comfort of my hostel is lost on me. It’s a bit close-quarters in my ridiculous money belt, causing me to pull a few notes out, which I promptly drop on the ground in front of me. I’ve already begun to make a commotion, and as I bend over to pick up the dropped notes, the rest falls out in a spray of western cash onto the ground. A couple of young girls are standing off in the distance, and must have seen me fumbling for something, so they come over to see what I’m doing. All of a sudden I’m surrounded by fifteen beggars with their hands out, jostling me. So what do I do? Run away… and of course they give chase! I think “no, this can’t happen” and I cut the chase short and turn to face the group, shamefully telling them that I can’t give any of my money away, I’m poor myself, I’m just a traveler, it’s all relative – with the value of the Australian dollar and all… I sound weak, and all the begging favourites are there: Small Child with Sad Eyes, Mother with Baby… I suddenly have a mental flip and think “hey, I’m not giving you guys money so you can take it to your begging pimp. I’ve read the travel guides!” So I back away, slink off and wonder just how needy those poor people are, and whether I should have handed over a few dollars. This is something I’ve thought about a lot, but I still haven’t worked out the “case-by-case” basis for giving away money to people who obviously need it. It isn’t just beggars that need money around here, it’s the whole god damn country I’m standing in that needs it. I don’t really know what to do.

Mum and Daughter

Kid on far right has a wicked coconut!

Pnom Penh is a big, rough, bustling place with garbage strewn everywhere and drains spewing smellies at the unwary person who happens to walk over one. It isn’t the prettiest town in South-East Asia by far, however it’s a really charming city.

Old Victorian?? Architecture

Compared to Thailand, the country is very poor and the sense of national pride very weak. Back in the early seventies, Cambodia was cruising along a path to westernization, with popular music and fashion playing a big role in everyday Pnom Penh life. In 1975, thanks to the Khmer Rouge party, this was all destroyed. The communist Khmer Rouge believed that the only way to put Cambodia on the map was to create a purely agrarian society, in which every man, woman and child worked on the land. The crops produced would be used to better the economy and help fight the terrible Youn, or Vietnamese, who were raping and murdering the Cambodian people. This was all propaganda, and the money from the workers in the fields was used to buy guns that were mainly used to kill Cambodian people. The Khmer Rouge soldiers were often very young, and sometimes were even brainwashed so much by the purveyors of propaganda that they informed on their own family as dissidents, sending parents, brothers and sisters to certain death. The party leader, Pol Pot, had first learnt Marxist theories in Paris and thought that they could be adapted to Cambodia to better the country. Unfortunately, he also believed that all professionals, intellectuals, artists, and people who worked for the previous Lon Nol government should be murdered. Over 4 years, almost 2 million Cambodians were killed by their own government and since the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge, there have been no formal trials of the party leaders.

Mass graves at the Killing Fields

The effects of the Khmer Rouge genocide are still being felt today. Many prisoners and soldiers of the regime are still alive today, however very few of the people in charge of killing have come forward. When you walk around Pnom Penh and look into the eyes of the older people on the street, you could be looking into the eyes of someone who saw their entire family murdered, or you could be looking at someone who killed 50 people. The woman who took us on a tour of the Toul Sleng prison had trouble composing herself. She had escaped into Vietnam, but had lost most of her family. Walking around the prison and seeing the beds where people had been tortured and beaten was a very humbling experience, as was reading the responses of ex prison guards, who had been given the choice of becoming a murderer, or being tortured to death. The days spent exploring the prison and killing fields were dark, and overshadowed all other attempts at seeing national monuments in Pnom Penh.

Toul Sleng Prison

After Pnom Penh, my parents had planned to head up to Siam Reap and the temples of Angkor. I decided to follow them and rode my bike the 300km in a day. Unfortunately, the night I arrived I came down with a bad case of food poisoning and ended up spending the next four days in bed. We’d planned a day trip of the temples for the day after I arrived but I couldn’t join them. They left the day after that, so my meet-up with the olds wasn’t so good. I self-diagnosed and administered some drugs and spent the four days watching incredible amounts of Hollywood crap on the cable TV channel. On day four I tried to do a tour of the Angkor temples but ended up having to race home feeling awful. I did see sunrise and some pretty cool ruins, but felt too horrible to go on. Feeling ill in a country that doesn’t have wonderful medical facilities is another humbling experience and I decided that, as I still wasn’t feeling 100%, I’d race back to Bangkok in order to be near a proper hospital if all went wrong. I was also keen to find a mechanic for my bike, as I’d noticed a leak coming from the countershaft.

Angkor Wat on Sunrise

Tree Chewing Up the Temple

The final experience that made me all humbled out in Cambodia was my 40km/h stack on the dirt highway back to the border town of Poipet. I don’t know how it happened, maybe I used my front brake at the wrong time, I think I hit a rock that flicked my wheel sideways but in the end I found myself on the ground. The panniers are a good thing and I’m glad I hadn’t shipped them back to Australia. They provide me with a little cubby-hole to sit in if the bike falls on its side, so I got away with a bruised knee and dented pride from the 25 Cambodian farmers stood gaping at the stupid Westerner on his arse. The car behind me, thanks for stopping by the way, hooted its horn until I managed to get someone to help me lift the bike and push it off the side of the road. I took it easy after that and realized how close I’d come to experience the title of my last post. I’m a careful rider, but sometimes these things happen and make you think, maybe I could go 10km/h slower and take in a bit more scenery.

Some Traffic – Icecream Van

More Traffic – alive upside-down pig on a bike

So, back in Bangkok I took my bike to Dynamik Motors and had the guy there do some routine maintenance. He fixed my oil leak and sorted out my growing valve clearance. I asked him if I could stay and learn how it is done, but I had to leave when I saw his guys with their hands in my bike’s motor: It was worse than watching myself operated on.

I met some Canadians and went to the National Museum with a cool American girl called Greta. We found it amusing watching the superwoman prowess of the scantily-clad Thai girl in the Indy bar, who seemed to change costumes at the drop of a hat. First skirts, then shirts with stripes and skin-tight tights. Very classy! I also ran into a lovely couple from the states who were heading up to Laos for some motorbike touring. Hopefully I can meet up again with Steve and Wan in the next couple of weeks. Steve works as a HIV doctor and has been living in Southern China. He went to a conference on the spread of diseases across Myanmar borders in Bangkok yesterday, which sounded interesting. Wan showed me where to find the best Pad Thai in town, second-to-none!

Tomorrow I ride to the Thai-Laos border and head into Laos for a couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to some scenic riding, something I haven’t seen on the trip since Australia. I’ll loop down the Thai-Burma border and then finish for a short stop in Chang Mai. I’ve decided the best way to get to India will be to fly the bike to Kathmandu. It seems easier than attempting to illegally ride through southern China. When I get back to Bangkok from Chang Mai, I’ll need to organise the bike shipping etc.

I hope everyone is well. Thank you to all those who are keeping in touch or are thinking of me. I go through patches of loneliness when I spend a while without “clicking” with people, but I know these times are passing. I’m reading The Power of One, which I’d always disregarded for being “The Power of One” damn my cinicism, the book is amazing and very inspirational. I’m looking forward to getting to Spain and meeting up with Steve and Tati and settling in for a bit, however I’m also mega-excited about everything that will happen along the way. Please also, if you feel adventurous, come and meet me along the way in India or wherever (I’m looking at you Rob H, Carly!!!)

Stay well all,
Love
Dameaux