Our experience with Cambodian means of transportation began as soon as we crossed the border from Thailand. The road was sometimes paved but more often a mix of dirt and gravel and in a continuous state of construction. Driving on the right is recommended though not strictly adhered to. I can only imagine that the cabs that regularly run this route (about 140km) must have to go in for suspension repair every couple of months. In that 3 hour cab ride, I think I lost all the benefits of the 3 Thai massages I had the previous week.

Over the next week we marveled at what Cambodians can transport on a bicycle, pickup or motorbike. I swear I counted over 25 people on one pickup truck, not to mention their belongings. I wish I had pictures of everything we saw, but since we never knew when to have the camera ready and were usually in shock or hysterics, my weak attempt at describing what we saw will have to suffice. After a while, nothing really surprised us, but the pickup truck with the (live) horse in the bed did amaze us. So did the 2 motorcycles strapped on top of a whole bunch of luggage in the bed of another pickup. Some other things we saw on motorbikes – 3 50lb. sacks of rice with one between the driver’s legs and 2 stacked on the seat behind him, on top of which his buddy was balancing; dozens of dead chickens hanging by their necks; 2 dead pigs; 2 guys carrying a car door; families with the father driving, a kid between his legs, his wife on the back carrying a baby, all, of course, with no helmets or any straps of any kind; all kinds of stuff strapped across the back of motorbikes which seemed to defy the laws of gravity and, at the very least, required a very wide berth. If only we had had a video camera!

I wish I could put into words how the traffic flows there. It really is something to sit back and just watch for a while. You have to realize, first, that there are as many, if not more, bicycles and motorbikes on the road than there are cars, and they often don’t stick to their side of the road. At an intersection it’s like a dance, a weave, or 4 streams coming together. There’s no neat orderly progression of vehicles waiting for their light to turn green. In fact, most of the time there’s no light. From the outside it seems like chaos, but it’s not. And, it works…somehow. If someone coming the other way is turning left and you’re going straight, they don’t wait for you to pass. They turn as if you weren’t there. And you don’t slam on the brakes and hit the horn. You simply go around them to the left, or further to the right if that works better. If you’re crossing heavy traffic, you don’t wait on your side of the intersection for the other traffic to clear. You venture out into the middle and the cross traffic veers around you – on the left or right – until you reach the other side. The key is, for the most part, everyone keeps moving. If you were carrying 3 50lb. sacks of rice and your buddy on the back of your motorbike, you wouldn’t want to stop either.

If you’ve read this far, you probably have a nagging question in the back of your head – “Why Cambodia?” Two words – Angkor Wat. It’s believed to be the world’s largest religious structure, built in the 12th century if I remember right. At least, that was our initial motivation, but as we read more about the country we just felt it would be more intriguing than Thailand. We had also wanted to do some volunteer work on our trip and thought there’d be more of a need there.  We hooked up with a woman named Ponheary Ly our first morning there. Which brings me to our second harrowing experience in Cambodia. Ponheary had no sooner picked us up when she collided with 3 kids on a motorbike. Her car just got a broken headlight, but the kids got a bit scraped up. We learned an interesting thing about accidents in Cambodia – that you have to settle things before the cops get there, otherwise you have to help “pay their salary”. A nice way of saying that they don’t get paid enough so if you don’t give them some money they will impound all the vehicles involved. So $15 later everyone was on their way.

Let me back up a bit. We had actually arranged a meeting with her by email first after finding her organization (www.plf.org) on the internet. She helps Cambodian kids with supplies and uniforms for school. The school is free the first 6 years, but the supplies and uniforms are not. Many families can’t afford the $20 it cost for a year. When she asked us what we wanted to do, we warned her that we weren’t teachers. Her response was, “Well, you speak English, don’t you?” We soon realized why. It was the first year the school had an English program and we figured out real quick that of the eight teachers who taught English, 3 could speak it OK and the rest didn’t come up with an excuse fast enough to get out of it. So we spent 3 days, 7-11am and 1-5pm, in 95 degree heat with 98% humidity, with no A/C, with classes as big as 40+ kids trying to teach English using a book that was written for Euro teens in the 90s. Do 10 yr. old Cambodian kids really need to know what country Leonardo DiCaprio comes from or that Anna Kournikova is/was a tennis player? After the first day I wanted to quit. And Tracy had a hard time trying to come up with a good argument why we shouldn’t. Mostly, we didn’t want to fail after just one day so we went back for more punishment the next day. And by the 3rd day we were getting the hang of it despite the horrible book we had to work with. We were also totally exhausted at the end of each day. But, I think both of us would do it again in a heartbeat. I don’t think we’ll ever forget 35 kids yelling “Teacher, me! Teacher, me!” There were some shy and quiet ones, but most of them really wanted to learn.

Back to those two words – Angkor Wat. Siem Reap used to be a dusty little city with nothing, but now it’s a dusty little city with huge hotels and lots of bars and restaurants. You can find a $10/night guesthouse or you can pay upwards of four or five hundred dollars for a luxury place.

Actually, there’s not just one temple, there are whole complexes of temples with the “jewel” being Angkor Wat. It  started out as a Hindu temple when the Angkor empire was Hindu. Then in the 16th century or so it was used as a Buddhist monastery. Today it, and all the ancient temples, are ruins, though many quite well-preserved, and are used mostly for tourism. Some people spend a week going through them all, but we hit the highlights in a day. Angkor Wat is amazing not only for its sheer size, but also for all the detailed stone carvings it contains. My favorite temple, though, was Ta Prohm, which some of you may have seen in the first Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie. Bad movie, cool temple. It has been overrun by the jungle and the trees now seem to be as much a part of the temple as the stone it is made of.

Not far from Siem Reap is one of the largest lakes in SE Asia, Tonle Sap. It is the lifeblood of central Cambodia. There is actually a large community of people that live in a floating village on the lake. Well, they do in the dry season when the lake level is much lower. In the rainy season the water level can rise as much as 30 feet or so and the lake is about 2/3 larger than in the dry season so the people have to move inland. We really wanted to go out and see it despite it being a bit touristy and harder to get to since we were late in the dry season. Another week or so and I don’t think the boats could’ve gone out of the harbor that we went from. Some of the boats were already getting stuck. They have most everything a normal village does – gas stations, restaurants, schools, a basketball court, and even a Catholic church. It just all happens to float.

We saw quite a bit around Siem Reap but we both felt we’d love to come back and see much more of the country and the people.