For those of you who have never been to Cambodia, or Siem Reap, all the tales you've ever heard about drivers and road rules are true - they don't exist. The "rules" that is. Most of the traffice seems to be split between motor bikes and bicycles. There are of course lots of cars but the motor bike rules supreme. Then of course we have the big tourist buses with their drivers thinking they are king of the road. They do not like to move over but prefer to drive almost in the middle.
And tooting - there's lots and lots of tooting. The early morning was filled not with the sound of birdsong, but with horns. My driver tooted at almost everything that moved, or so it seemed. Tooting at cyclists, tooting at other tuk tuks - we passed many of the other tuk tuks. In Cambodia you drive on the right hand side of the road, when you make a left hand turn, instead of being in the right hand lane, most drivers turn into the left hand lane hereby driving on the wrong side of the road with oncoming traffic coming towards you. They then guage when to move over into the correct lane. I had my hands resting on each side of the tuk tuk and a motor cyclist came within six inches of it.
I closed my eyes so I wouldn't have to see, then told myself, "Look at the scenery, look at the scenery." Surprisingly, it all seems to go smoothly and nobody crashes!
Unlike here in Australia, no-one slowed down when they passed the local "cop shop". There are many police around, on the sides of the road at certain intervals, standing near the bikes.
This sign was everywhere - I took a bit of a dislike to these three chaps, after all, I couldn't see any advertisments for their opponents. They look so solemn!
As we drove on further, we passed large, expensive hotels. Theses were all situated a fair way out of town. For the rich people. Although why you'd want to stay miles away from town I don't know. It's much more fun staying in the middle of town among the local people. The sights, sounds and general hub-bub of every day life, the little shop across the road, the lady with her chickens hanging up outisde in the air, cafes and markets - these are the things that I enjoy.
We started to see traffic lights, and I was very impressed with them for when they change to red (or green) not only do you have a red/green light, you also see in red or green the number of seconds ticking down until the lights change again.
For example, the light has changed to red, so there's the number 45 in red, which does the countdown - 45, 44, 43, 42, etc. When the number has changed from 4 to 3 - the drivers whizz across. None of this wating for the red number 1 to change to green number 45. Not all lights start at 45, depending on the intersection, some start at 35 or another number.
We turned at a roundabout and were driving alonside the river. It was an idyllic scene and I'd loved to have been able to stop there and just sit on one of the seats for a time looking at the water. I had planned on doing this later, but didn't get the chance. But there's alwasy a next time, and I definitely plan on going back - this time for about a week.
This is the bridge we crossed to get into town and it's the same one used to go out or return.
1 comment:
I'm really enjoying your trip to Siem Reap... I'm going there in the morning so I'm super excited! Your pics of Penang were great too! Thank you!
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