Cows, Water Bombs & Dirty Coppers

I decided to hire a dirt bike for our trip to the seaside. It's a pretty good way to get around here as the roads are often not good and we thought it would be fun. I hired a Honda Baja 250cc from "The Bike Shop" which is a French run shop on street 302. The bikes here cost more to hire than the local shops but they seem in pretty good nick and are well maintained with genuine parts which seemed pretty important to me for our 500+km round trip.

Despite not having ridden a bike since leaving Blighty 6 years ago, it was really easy to pick up again and I soon found myself blatting round Phnom Penh. So after strapping on our one small bag, Em took the very uncomfortable pillion position and we took off for Kep.

The number 3 highway to Kep wasn't all that great, some small stretches of dirt, not enough tarmac for two lanes, and some of the bridges were out or damaged which meant you had to take a detour through the dry river bed on dirt (not sure what they will do in the wet season). The result though was that we couldn't go too fast - our top speed for the whole trip to Kep was probably 50kmh - which was lucky as one of my few concentration lapses happened on the way when I started checking out a large Buddha Em was pointing out to me and ran off the road onto the verge by accident.

The low speed was also good for me to get acclimatised to Cambodian highway driving which is just as terrifying as Phnom Penh city driving but in different ways. When I passed my bike test back in the day I took an extra 2 day advanced course where the guy taught the art of "defensive riding". On English roads they didn't literally mean everyone else is "attacking" you but that was the mentality to develop ie: what if that car pulls out etc. In Cambodia, it's very important to have this mentality all the time as that car definitely will pull out and everyone is quite literally out to get you. I said in a previous post, bikes are pretty low in the road pecking order. So, if cars want to overtake on the single lane highways, and you're the only thing coming the other way, they'll pull out. Blind corner ? No worries, just pull out. Brow of a hill ? She'll be right, out you go. Very quickly you learn to ride almost in the gutter and eye off your potential runoff all the time.

Starting to develop that 1000 yard stare...

The other local road hazard I was introduced to on the way down was cows. These mangy looking specimens wander round trying to find a decent patch of grass and they'll just step out if they think it's on the other side of the road. Get that emergency stop ready...by the way the steaks are pretty terrible over here but that's another story.

We did some real dirt up and down Bokor Mountain for a day trip which was great fun, 30km of hairpins up and down the side of a mountain to see an old resort. The next hazard we encountered just after this on the way to Sihanoukville and to be fair it wouldn't happen all the time. It was Khmer New Year and one of the traditions is to throw water at people. I don't know why but I never saw this happen to anyone on foot. It seems to be mainly a motorised pursuit and everyone is fair game. The first time we saw a 'squadron' of moto's screaming down the highway with the pillions throwing water bombs at each other and the drivers, then some kids on the side of the road started throwing water bombs at Em & I as we whizzed past. The most spectacular was the sight of 2 open top trucks carrying 20 people each and a dustbin of water pass each other on the busy highway and everyone on board unload on the opposition using saucepans, buckets etc. Needless to say we got soaked multiple times, but I managed not to crash the bike.

Highway 4 back from Sihanoukville was a great road, only single carriageway but good tarmac all the way, fast, and it had proper road markings. The road markings don't really mean anything however. They had solid single white lines and solid double white lines in the middle of the road in a number of places, but on some occasions I couldn't see why and on others where they were definitely needed there were none. The whole exercise was academic though as I quickly realised that no-one pays any attention to them anyway. The thing is that everything I said before is still true (overtaking on blind corners, brows of hills, when you're coming the other way, double solid white lines etc) except that now it's happening at 100kmh. How's that verge looking now ? The added danger is that now there are swanky 4WD's & dark glass Lexus' coming flying up behind and overtaking you when you're trying to overtake the guy in front. The low points of the trip back were probably the articulated truck coming the other way deciding that we weren't big enough to worry about and pulling out to overtake another artic (we were run off the road yet again), and the black military 4WD overtaking us that almost took us out as I pulled out to overtake a slow van. I couldn't help wondering about the road death toll on the way back. It must be high, not just because of the poor driving standards and roads, but because people are frequently jammed into cars / trucks, hanging out the boot as they fly along, sitting on the roof of a van etc. We saw one cattle truck leaving Kep which must have had 100 + people in it...standing room only !

By this time my 1000 yard stare was fully developed. I found myself constantly looking way ahead up the road, in my mirrors, in my blind spot like a paranoid crazy man. At several points I was angry enough to vent with my horn, but it's really pointless as that isn't what the horn is for here. To be fair to the Cambodians, they've actually got this one right, the horn is used to say "hey, i'm here", and not "*!@# you, you crazy ^#*U%&@". The times they usually say "hey, i'm here" though are just after they've pulled out to overtake on the brow of a hill, oncoming into your path just before they run you off the road etc so I don't think I can really praise driving standards too highly.

Sorry for ranting but there is a point to all this. After 5 hours of extreme concentration that had left me feeling like a physical and mental wreck we arrived back into Phnom Penh. Ah, home sweet home, just a few kilometres to drive through streets we knew and well, kind of loved. But no, what's this, the traffic's being held up by some traffic police to let a government convoy through, and now we can go, but the cop is pulling me over, and i'm trying to ride round because I know why and oh no, it's too late I have to stop.

We'd heard all about the corrupt local coppers from friends, lounging around on the side of the road in groups of 4 or 5, waiting for a barang to come past, pulling them over on some trumped up charge and getting them to pay an "on the spot" fine. I'd already dodged them several times (they're too lazy to give chase if you just drive past) but this time i'd have had to ridden over the rozzer to escape which didn't seem like a good idea. We knew the right strategy to adopt, act innocent and dumb, smile a lot, negotiate heavily from their opening price to a figure of $1-$2 or so, and off you go.

After 500km of nightmare roads, and in my heightened mental state though I lost the plot a little bit, I started throwing my hands around and demanding to know why they'd pulled me over. They got a bit agitated and started mentioning the police station. The "charge" was that I didn't have a Cambodian drivers license, my international license doesn't cut it apparently. At this point Em wisely intervened and asked for the "on the spot" fine. We both laughed out loud when the old filth wrote down $70. Then we sat down on the ground and waited. I was still fuming, but Em did a great job to get them down to $3 which we paid. As we were leaving the tough guy who had given me a hard time came over and leering said "How much did you pay huh ?". Grrr...if only I was Eric Bana.

I know this is the lay of the land here. These guys only get paid $30 a month so supplementing their income this way is kind of understandable. I can't get it out of my head though that this kind of endemic corruption in society and institutions has and will continue to retard progress in this country.

All things considered, the bike was great fun (apart from very sore behinds) and we would both do it again.