CAMBODIA


I heard that the roads in Cambodia were going to be really bad, so I was pretty excited to get there.  As it turned out, the road leading to the border post was exactly that - really bad. In fact, it was pretty much a big muddy mess until we reached the small border outpost between these two small countries – Laos and Cambodia.  Once we crossed the border however, the road became a smooth belt of asphalt where some serious high speed cruising was possible.  What was a fun muddy mess was suddenly a high-speed band of asphalt laid down across the flat Cambodian countryside and we were instantly robbed of our sense of adventure.

Things don’t always turn out exactly as you expect, for better or for worse.  A lot of times, you might remember an experience because it was far worse than you anticipated, and you end up calling it an “adventure” because of that. I once heard somebody refer to these kinds of experiences as something similar to a boot camp. “Something I’m glad I did but I never want to do again” was what they said.  At any rate, what I am thinking is that our expectations of a place have a lot to do with our experience and we always have to be careful to see a place for what it is without letting our expectations tell us what to think.


The first time I heard of Cambodia was in the mid 80’s when I listened to the punk rock bad, The Dead Kennedys, sing “Holiday in Cambodia”, a song that basically said if you don’t like your middle class white American life, try living in Pol Pot’s Cambodia for awhile. At any rate, I quickly began to associate life in this small country with extreme hardships – war, famine, genocide, violence, poverty, etc.  The more I learned over the years, the darker it got. Cambodia was a place of black markets and trading in weapons, women and drugs. It was a final fronti er on planet earth where the civilized world came to an end and anything illicit was possible. Want to shoot a cow with a rocket-propelled grenade? Cambodia is the place. Want to ??? Well, anyway, you get the idea.


So I was very surprised when I got to Phnom Phen, the capitol and found it to be like any other capitol city in the world – full of big paved streets and large buildings dedicated to commerce and finance. It wasn’t quite the lawless frontier I had imagined. And yet I wondered how much I could blame them? Who wants to live that kind of life forever? I couldn’t blame anyone who would want to get beyond the experiences that the average Cambodian has been through. Case in point - our tour guide who we interviewed outside of the Killing Fields. Four of his family members were murdered during the Khmer Rouge regime and somehow he survived. Very humbly he told us about his experience and then said that every Cambodian has the same story to tell. To me it is very humbling to think about what the Cambodian people have been through and then see how much they are trying to move forward. What else would you expect?


So my passage through Cambodia has left me feeling a little bit strange. On the one hand, I went in there hoping to experience some of the danger and darkness I expected to find, but ended up feeling a little bit disappointed when I didn’t find what I expected. And then a little bit guilty about wanting it in the first place when I saw what life is really like in this little corner of the world.


The most ironic thing of all was that our arrival to Cambodia coincided with a national religious holiday.  There was a three-day festival where everyone in the country was on vacation and moving to and from the capitol.  Overloaded trucks with twenty or more people on the outside of the vehicle were seen everywhere.  They were either going to the countryside (if they lived in the city) or going to the city (if they lived in the countryside).  Everybody was in high spirits, the temples were full of food and people were cheerful. It really was a holiday in Cambodia in the best way possible.


Greetings,

Sterling Noren

Hi from Cambodia!

We crossed the border from Laos into Cambodia with ease. This is a very remote border crossing, and it was definitely a fun GS ride there. The border station in Laos is a small hut in the woods. We breeze through and process into Cambodia, and get our visas on arrival. I was wondering what the roads in Cambodia would be like and we are greeted by a TWO-lane highway with a center stripe. We have a quick 80km run to Stung Treng. Even with the border crossing and another ferry across the Mekong we have time to do some laundry and wash the bikes.


The next day is a long hot ride to Kompong Cham, but we break it up with a stop along the Mekong. We have read about the freshwater dolphins that lIve in this stretch of the river and we want to investigate. We are in luck and hire a boat, and sure enough, find some of the Irwaddy Dolphins. There are only about 45 of these endangered animals left living. After an overnight we head for the capitol city, Phnom Penh. We have a great ride that day and the roads are very crowded as it's the first day of a three-day Buddhist festival. We take a break in Skuom as we heard they serve a local delicacy of spider. We pull over at the town center and there they are, tarantula curb service. The ladies at the roadside booths have platters piled high with deep-fried spider seasoned with garlic. Helge savors an extra large spidey after hearing they taste like crab. After we arrive in Phnom Penh we visit the Killing Field Memorial. Over 2 million people were killed in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Genocide and a social experiment gone terribly wrong.


We are headed for the coast and the crab capital of Cambodia. We arrive in Kep just before sunset and are greeted by huge Crab statue on the beach. Of course we have a crab feast that night for dinner. We order crab cooked every way they offer it at the little restaurant. The next morning we load up the bikes and head out of town, but encounter a crab market at the beach. Helge slams on the brakes and pulls over. I am worried that we may never get him to leave. After a couple hours we convince him that there is more crab down the road and we head out of town. We see our first elephant today, she was huge and just walking down the road with her 2 handlers. We make it into Sihanoukville in time to change the oil on our bikes. This is another beach town and are treated to a great sunset.


Our next destination is Siem Reap.



Chris Poland