Buying, Owning and Driving a Car in Cambodia Part 3

I’ve done a lot of driving in the past, including a two year stint as a cabbie in New York and several years driving recycling and garbage trucks in Portland, but it’s been a long time since I could say I actually enjoyed it. As I’ve remarked many times while back in the states in recent years, a leisurely drive on a bucolic country highway can be a pleasurable experience, but city traffic, or much worse, freeway driving? No attraction, no fun whatever. When I drive back there I even go to some lengths to avoid getting on the freeway though using city streets sometimes adds substantially to trip time: I don’t need the tension, I’d rather take it slow and easy.

Which makes being behind the wheel in Cambodia immensely more ironic since there isn’t hardly anywhere or even anytime on the roads here that driving could be considered relaxing.

Tension is an inevitable, inseparable part of driving a car no matter where you are or how good your skills: you are, after all, master of a hunky piece of machinery that is capable of causing a lot of damage. You may be in the driver’s seat, cautious and careful as all get out, but there are always events beyond your control.

Tooling around Kampot can be pretty light on the nerves, as in that slow country road in America, but driving in Phnom Penh can be like negotiating through a fearsome jungle of wild beasts.

A friend who drives in the city compares it to playing video games: very true, except, of course, the stakes are much higher and instead of vanquishing your enemies, the object is to successfully dodge the figurative bullets, bazookas and ballistic missiles coming at you from all directions. This is nothing like driving in America where you can often go on autopilot – stay in your lane, follow the leader, watch for brake lights. Here it requires extreme vigilance; a momentary lapse of attention and KAPUT… like when a twelve-year-old cuts in front of you on his Chaly and forces you into a desperate braking action. Where would you be if you had taken a second off to muse upon a passing skirt?

Survival mode in the city requires going slow as molasses. Let them fly by, as little fish rushing past a lumbering big fish; no skin off my big nose, I just want to get there sans trauma. In fact, I’ve realized for a long time that the ability to crawl along without engendering road rage is one of the primary reasons I thought I could handle driving here. There are always a few arrogant bastards who take umbrage at your slowness, but for the most part, drivers here display a stupendous level of patience on the road. A good thing, otherwise you’d be a babbling, bumbling nervous wreck in about 2 minutes.

Driving in the city is a game of bob and weave, thrust and parry, feint and challenge. You are competing for space in a field of cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes, motorbike pulled trailers, three-wheel taxis, bicycles, hand carts and pedestrians and more.

Whoever gets there firstest with the mostest vehicle is the prevailing philosophy of the road. When crossing a busy street you very slowly put your vehicle out into traffic until passage is blocked so that drivers can no longer find a way to maneuver around you. The bigger your vehicle the more trepidation and caution you evince from other drivers who are also coveting the same street space.

The bigger vehicle theory is countered by those bold and fearless enough to put their little putt-putt motorbike in the path of a monster SUV and hang the possible consequences. Since you never know who or what may challenge you for position, or even what direction they may be coming from, vigilance, once again, is of the essence. No matter how stupid, irrational or suicidal their moves, you still don’t want to hit them. Even if they damn well deserve to be blottoed out of existence, and you’d be aiding traffic flow by removing one mindless, oblivious, numbskull from the streets, the satisfaction is hardly worth the shit you’d have to go through.

If you are unfortunate enough to get in an accident, you’ll almost certainly pay, especially if it involves personal injury, and that’s true pretty much regardless of who was at fault. The rule is: whoever has the means pays the medical bills. And since as a white person, you must be rich, the tab is on you.

Allowing some slack to driving dimwits is also called for since I cannot profess to be blameless either. Maybe it’s because I’m approaching geezerhood, but sometimes, in the swirl of traffic, I get a little spacey. Like recently while driving on Highway 4 on the peninsula side of the Japanese bridge I turned into a gas station without signaling. Sometimes I have the feeling that going super slow is enough, but this time it evidently was not. As I was gently easing over I surprised a motorcycle driver who was racing by me on the right. He slid alongside, making the turn with me, our vehicles in contact. He hit and rotated my rear view mirror and went pretty far into the gas station before he could stop. I made a sour face and waved him on. Even though he was going way too fast for conditions, I clearly was equally at fault for not signaling. Hopefully, he learned a lesson and will slow down a little: meanwhile a poignant reminder that the margin between life and death is sometimes razor thin.

But that’s what driving is all about here: a continuous series of near misses. And a good reason why I don’t use the car much around town; I mostly still walk. The hassle of parking, not to mention driving, in the capital during the day would preclude for me, even if I didn’t like walking, using a car to do small errands. I use it to do carting, such as taking my computer to the shop, and drive it to the garage to get fixed, otherwise pretty rare. One thing certain, it would take a monumental force to get me on the streets at peak hour. 

Night time is different; in a week of barhopping I might use it twice. I kind of like the idea of walking off my five or six beer nighttime quota on a 2AM stroll through the sleeping streets of the capital. Needless to say, it’s a much easier trip in the car. Wheels especially come in handy in the rain and I really appreciate being able to get to Martini’s on my own power. While there certainly is a contingent of drunken maniac drivers out there in the wee hours, for the most part the streets are empty and easy to negotiate. Anyway, I drive even more slowly in those circumstances.

My primary motivation for buying a car was the frequent trips I make from the big city to Kampot, averaging about six per month. I really never imagined I would be commuting this way. As often as not, I’m riding solo. It’s not just my natural aversion to driving that creates a philosophical enigma, but the waste of resources/greenhouses gases, blah, blah, blah part is anathema to my professed beliefs.

Beliefs or otherwise (exploring that is a tome in itself) it sure has been a pleasure to have it, though concurrently positively frightening at times. On my last trip to Kampot I hit a teenager on a bicycle; fortunately it was just before I screeched to a halt. I was behind a sizeable truck preparing to pass when he made a left right in front of me. The truck might’ve hid me from view, or else he simply miscalculated how close I was.

I knocked him over; he got up, obviously unhurt, not clutching any body parts. I pointed at my eyes and said the word in Khmer a couple times. Meanwhile a small crowd had gathered and started to make time-for-a little-compensation-sounds, at which point I did what any upstanding Khmer would do, I took off. No way was I going to reward him for blindly driving into my path. Actually, I’m really not that callous; regardless of fault, I would’ve stopped to assist and pay if he had been injured. In the end result, though I was driving totally normally for Khmer highways, normal, under the conditions, is nowhere near cautious enough.

Hopefully, he too learned a lesson about caution and his bike suffered no damage. Hopefully, I will also be more cautious. Meanwhile the Camry now has a small discoloration and a couple small scratches on its white bumper. Meanwhile, I really should get serious about insurance.

After that I promised myself I would try to keep my speed down to 45mph, (about 72kph) which in fact, might have saved a little puppy’s life about an hour later: it ran right in front of me; I was barely able to brake in time to avoid snuffing it out.

Though I’ve been slow to the extreme in Phnom Penh, I’ve been driving much faster than I thought I would on the highway. There are stretches of relatively smooth road with light traffic and there’s something about being on a longish trip – it’s about 150 k’s to Kampot on the route I take – that makes me antsy to reach my destination.

I have gotten over 60mph at times though it always feels a little dodgy. As events have proven, the space between life and death can be quite narrow. Even in those stretches of highway where traffic is light, the roughness of most roadways will jangle your innards, while the possibility that a giant pothole will appear out of nowhere keeps your eyes glued to the road; or should anyway.

I often thought to myself, on the many bus and taxi trips I took between Phnom Penh and Kampot, how drivers really needed familiarity with the road and especially the bridges to avoid serious problems. This was amply brought home to me on my second trip. There’s a bridge on Highway 3 south of Angtasom, which is at about the halfway point, which has short, steep, even strangely configured ramps leading up to it. The road, however, as it approaches it is quite smooth so I was barreling along at about 50mph (80kph) when it took me by surprise and whoa… I was airborne. Hit the brakes as I descended back on to the bridge’s metal roadway and did some fair screeching till I reached the down side strange ramp where I nearly hit my head on the roof. It’s a good thing I was riding solo: there would’ve been some serious consternation, if not injury on the part of any passengers.
         
Familiarity with stationary hazards sure helps to smooth your trip but there’s nothing you can do to prepare yourself for the myriad moving challenges which pop up unexpectedly, even surreptitiously, at times… except to keep your speed down.

There is one additional reason why I like having a car: Kampot’s dogs of midnight. It seems like everybody has a dog and the majority let them run free. This is not a problem in daytime, but night is so quiet in the sleepy burg, that when I ride my bicycle home the slightest sound arouses one or two of them and soon the whole neighborhood is in an uproar. I’m really not very good with dogs so having them chase me while acting dangerous is not my favorite thing. In fact, in the past before I bought the car I was able to ride home without running the dog gauntlet a few times, but they were rare and it always made me nervous. What’s more, I do know people who were bit, so it makes me very uncomfortable. It seems a stupid waste to drive such a short distance – about a kilometer – when I’d much prefer riding the bike, but I’m sure glad I don’t need to fret over the canines.

The more I drive, the more I look forward to hanging out at “the farm” in Kampot and using the car much less.