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This is an entry about the last fortnight's holiday. I did three moto trips, one to Prasat Preah Vihear (covered last episode), one to the Cardomoms and then finally one to Thailand. I also throw in some more commentary about Range Rovers.
RANGE ROVERS, CONTINUED
In Episode 10 I registered some complaints about the high number of Range Rovers in Phnom Penh. During the recent ASEAN conference, a Bangkok Post columnist showed that I am not alone in my observations. Multiple other bloggers have made similar points, there's even a news article of a Khmer being conned out of $60,000+ when trying to buy a Range Rover off a Ukrainian! The Post article mentioned Lexuses, but the point is the same. Apart from reading the article recently, another reason I'm bringing this up is that I did a road trip through Thailand from last Friday to yesterday and thereby received ample opportunities to compare ratios of 'nice cars' on the roads of the two countries. Basically, there is a relative glut of Lexus SUVs and Range Rovers in Cambodia (and one blogger makes the same comparison with Malaysia). Indeed, the only Range Rover I saw in Thailand was from Cambodia, on Highway 3, not far past Klong Yai. The funny thing is, it didn't have a license plate. Know how I could tell it was Khmer? It had a government VIP plate on the front windshield. Remember what I was saying about the disturbingly high number of such Range Rovers in Phnom Penh? I reckon this little example pretty much sums up the situation. Oh, and I didn't see a single Thai Lexus SUV either. By the way, my sample was not small - I rode from Had Lek to Pattaya on Highways 3, 36 and 7 - 700km return. What I did see was a very high proportion of utes: Isuzus, Nissans, a couple of Chevrolets, but mostly Toyotas (majority of those Hiluxes). Combined with driving on the left, this made me feel like I was back in Australia - although even Thailand I'd say has a higher number of utes per capita.
So, I support the observations about luxury cars of Umesh Pandey in the Post. As noted in the column and the cbt.com post, it must be a shock to someone coming from a supposedly more 'developed' neighbouring nation and seeing the terrible state of infrastructure, health and education in Cambodia whilst being confronted with a constant parade of luxury vehicles. Something is wrong with this picture. What did I see in Thailand in terms of luxury vehicles? Well, similar to Brisbane, Australia where I guess I saw in the order of 15-20 a day on my commute to the city and back. They were mainly low level BMWs and Mercedes. I saw perhaps two Merc coups cruising the beach strip in Pattaya on Saturday night. When I did see SUVs they were comparatively cheap like Captivas or Forerunners. There were also a great many vans with big bodykits like I hear are popular in Japan. A last comment on utes, they exist in Cambodia but half of them are horrible hulking American things like Tundras, Hummers, Escalades etc. None of these were in Thailand. All of these are hideously expensive for the average Khmer, and Thai for that matter. Thailand is supposed to be a 'Tiger economy' - richer, more successful than Cambodia by orders of magnitude.
I acknowledge that the vastly lower frequency of American hulks might partly be because Thais driving on the left means there's no point importing them second hand like happens in Cambodia. Nevertheless, these vehicles are damned expensive whichever way you look at it, even for Australians. Again, the GDP/capita league table. Look toward the bottom. Oh, and whilst I'm at it, a comparison of Thailand and Cambodia using ifitweremyhome.com. Interesting stats from there - Thais make 4.3 times as much as Khmers in terms of GDP/capita and live 10.3 years longer.
How do NGO/expat aid workers allow themselves to continue in the midst of all of this obscenity? I can start to explain things by appealing to cognitive dissonance. As stated on that page, we become uncomfortable when in possession of multiple conflicting beliefs. In this context, one belief might be that Cambodia is 185th out of 226 countries in terms of GDP/capita. Another belief, conflicting with the first, might be that there is a far higher
proportion of Range Rovers and Lexus SUVs to normal vehicles in Phnom Penh than more developed countries, such as Thailand (ranked 112) and Australia (ranked 19). A third belief, conflicting with the second, might be that there is a need for expat aid workers in Cambodia. That source advises of three ways we commonly go about reducing the conflict arising from dissonant beliefs. I won't plainly recount them - I am most interested in the later statement that one's choices will improve with an understanding of the effect of cognitive dissonance. I'm going for the second and third methods of reducing conflict, in that I will change my belief in the need for expat aid workers and reduce the importance of the belief that Cambodia is ranked 185th in GDP/capita. The latter may also be a factor in Range Rover purchasers' decisions in Cambodia and I'm happy for them to be held accountable for it, especially if they're government workers.
CARDOMOMS (playlist of youtube videos I took)
Ok, now that's off my chest, time to back up a bit. Wednesday and Thursday last week Jim and I did a loop through Pursat, Pramaoy, Koh Kong and back to Phnom Penh. This took us through the famous Cardomom Mountains in western Cambodia, along a dirt road/track built by the Chinese as part of their hydro scheme south of Pramaoy. It was an adventure! I'm very glad I took Jim 1's advice and hired a Baja 250 as my bike doesn't have the suspension travel to cope with the ruts and pot holes now in the road. This bike was also a lot faster on the highway, I think due to a smaller front sprocket. An indication of the speeds we reached is that we nailed Kampong Chnnang to Pursat in an hour! Basically, to get to the Cardomoms, head left at the Total petrol station in Pursat. You'll bend through a few villages for a bit before a Y junction (the other road comes in on your right at a left hand bend). Continue on, the road will turn to dirt and you'll start heading into the mountains. It's all pretty tame until after Pramaoy. Pramaoy is a good place to stop and have a rest, there's also a petrol station and a few places to eat. The one we stopped at was also where Jim 2, a retired US airforce mechanic, was having lunch. It was nice chatting to him about his 1.5 years living in outback Cambodia beating around the fire trails on his '90 Baja. His was better than ours as the headlights turned with the steering. He'd fixed F4s and F16s, amongst others, during his 21 years in the service so it was a pity we didn't have more time to quiz him.
After refuelling an an obligatory pose in front of the rather thorough sign listing about two dozen types of potential UXO in the area, off we went south. I promptly had my first moto crash in Cambodia, running into two kids on a Daelim who simply pulled out in front of me without looking. There was a lot of high grass on the right where they came from so I had about half a second to react. I got a bit out of their way but things weren't helped by them coming to a panicked stop in my path rather than getting across the road. Finding myself on my back and them next to me I jumped up and picked up the boy left lying on the ground. He wasn't quite writhing but was in enough pain as not to be able to move. Thankfully it was only grazes, although quite a few - as had I on both shoulders, and my left leg. Of course half the village quickly gathered round and I was very grateful to have Jim 1 with me to talk in Khmer. The elders acknowledged freely that the boys were at fault although I also should have been riding more toward the middle of the road and beeping my horn periodically. Thankfully I was only going about 20km/h. I paid them $25 compensation just to make things right and limped off down the road a bit to repair my own wounds, filled with sickening thoughts about being a typical white colonist smashing through the villages/ers for pleasure, never to see them again. Now I'm a horn fanatic.
The bike was fine, thankfully, apart from a bent front mudguard, broken clutch lever (just the end of it) and bent gear lever. So on we went. The next thing making this an adventure was it poured with rain. A real wet season type downpour which made us sodden in a minute and the road a mudslide. Cowed by the threat of capsizing, we minced along until finding a poaching spotter's hut. He had room for both of us to sit for half an our whilst the worst of it passed. There was also a cat making itself at home which was a quaint touch. He said he was there to stop people taking animals out of the mountains, including tigers(!) although I wasn't born yesterday. On we went sliding up the road, although it wasn't as bad as it might have been, the Chinese had done a little thinking when the built it, covering the track with gravel that meant we still had a bit of grip despite the wet. We soldiered on till another downpour forced us to shelter in the verandah of someone's hut, this time continuing despite the rain still coming down only slightly less vigorously since we figured we were soaked through and could still make progress.
Of course we had to make a river crossing! The water was flowing pretty swiftly although there were flat rocks right the way across with only 150-200mm of water flowing over so it was easy just to ride across. Soon we came upon the hydro project, quite an impressive bit of concrete. It looked like it still had a year's worth of construction to go. You'll see in the photos. Then on we went, past a few sites down the hill where they were making materials for the hydro project such as cement... there was also a sub station. Soon enough we reached the last village before Koh Kong, about 60km away. It was on dusk and we decided to eat something. The day had one last trick left up its sleeve though, killing my headlights. Just as we were taking off I turned them on, then off and on again for fiddling's sake. Only thing is, they never came on again. Not for the next 60k of darkness! Wet, slippery dirt road in the middle of the bush after starting at 6am in Phnom Penh. Never ridden that type of bike before that day. Never ridden the road before. Riding in darkness. Luckily I'd packed a fairly decent head torch but they're actually pretty useless for anything more than walking speed due to the very small patch of light offered. So I kept it on anyway and road in Jim 1's headlights, still quite an effective way to travel. On we plodded for another 3 hours. It was whilst loping through the night, blackness except for a small pool of yellow light I sometimes stayed in for all of Jim 1's efforts to navigate himself along the rutted, potholed track, that I realised this was our best ride yet. (Yes, going by other stories on gt-rider.com, we haven't seen nothing...)
Eventually we saw the lights of Koh Kong. It was something of a relief to see so many as I'd never been there and thought it'd just be a little river side village with a couple of shacks, maybe one guesthouse and so all of our efforts pushing on would be for nothing. Thankfully we found a nice hotel/civilisation to shelter in. The ride back home was brisk but fun. The highway up through the hills out of Koh Kong is my favourite in Cambodia so far (my favourite track of course being the one we did the night before). It's got a lot of nice bends and elevation changes making for a good test of one's apex hunting skills. We got back 5 minutes before the bike shop closed, with me all in a rush to get to the copy/photo shop so I could get my documents in order for the trip to Thailand the following day.
THAILAND (playlist of youtube videos I took)
I didn't mention before that when in Koh Kong I went to the border with Jim 1, technically the owner of the bike, where we found it would be possible for me to cross the border with the bike with sufficient documentation (detailed here). So off I went like a shot with less than a day's planning. A mate said head to Ko Chang and Pattaya, thus a route was planned. Ko Chang I reached with little fuss, just retracing my steps from Phnom Penh to Koh Kong via National Highway 4 then Highway 48, along that lovely twisting plunge through the hills again. The border crossing was 1.5hrs of paper shuffling, but was relatively painless. Ko Chang I reached in about 1.5hrs although not before severely overshooting the ferry turnoff by 25km due to having too much fun fanging down the roads. I got there in the dark, thankfully the last ferry's at 9 this time of year, and took pretty much the first room I found given that I thought there would be very few available and I just wanted a place to crash. Turns out it was on White Sand Beach, the snootier end of the island but what the hell I was on holiday. I wish I'd had the sense to forego the loony plan to head for Pattaya and just stayed there for three more days but off I went the next morning after a quick jaunt round the island seeing a few sites. The road is a rollercoaster, headspinning negative g on some crests and all! It was also fun feeling like I was the only one on a real moto there, jealous looks are the best compliments!
Pattaya was a dense neon jungle crawling with sexpats, Russians, Scandinavians and water pistols. I forgot to mention that I was on this holiday because of Khmer New Year, although they had the same holiday in Thailand - only calling it the Water Festival. It certainly was. The first town I entered across the border was Klong Yai, only to hike it due to what can only be described as the biggest waterfight I've ever seen in my life occuring on every street. I innocently entered only looking for insurance for my moto since immigration said they didn't have any to sell me. I was promptly drenched from head to foot by herds of revellers in utes sloshing water in buckets and hammering passers by with super soaker water pistols. It was the craziest thing. The town center was packed with people just chucking water. But it was all happening from utes, wihch crawled along a route around the market with people dancing in the back, music hammering and general gay bedlam. They were also wiping talcum powder or white clay on people's faces as part of the ceremony. I was not spared. I beat it, half with a smile half with an angry grimace at having been so comprehensively drenched. What a time to do a moto trip through Thailand.
Ok, back to Pattaya. Well, because I'd not really planned the trip I rode too far to really enjoy the place in the short time I had before turning back. That short time was basically Sunday, which I slept through half of as I was so exhausted after the ride in from Ko Chang. Must say it was a bit of a bore given it was highway riding, although I found the little Suzuki could keep up with Thai traffic without exploding which was good! I went through my first clover leaf - type freeway intersection just outside Pattaya (connecting Highway 36 with 7) and managed to get lost! The problem was there was a sign saying head left for Pattaya, but then there was one seeming to indicate I should keep going straight ahead. I'd looked at the map and knew it should be left but then thought I better trust the second sign for some reason. No matter, I did a U turn (there was no one on the freeway), headed through a ditch to the correct lane and was on my merry way again. It was quite something hammering along the veritable concrete canyon that is Highway 7 into Pattaya. It's about 4 lanes wide and feels like a world, and century, away from Cambodia.
Sunday I did manage to do a couple of things in Pattaya before making a dash for the border. First, I went parasailing in the bay (video). This was an amazing set up where there was a big floating platform being circled by about 6 speedboats. They'd each go around it once, then slow down at just the right point such that the parasailor would drop gently down onto the platform. They'd then have to wait about a minute for the next customer to be harnessed up before slowly edging off, parasailor running along the platform for a bit before lifting up into the air. I went quite high up and wish I'd had a GoPro camera or something strapped to my head. It only lasted about 5 minutes and cost TB1000 but it was worth it. The second thing I did was stand on the side of the Pattaya Sai Nueng, the road going along the beach, and throw water at people (video). This had been a while coming and I spent about 10 minutes at it! It's great to know that not all 'cultural experiences' in the world are filled with gravity and pompousness.
And then I rode back to Phnom Penh. My bike is very unsuited for highway touring. It can sit on a decent speed but without a windshield it's always going to be an exhausting ride. Took me a day and a half to recover.
Phnom Penh Mapping Meetup 5 is on next week, 5:30pm at Equinox again. It'll be about land registration. Should be good!
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