There is lots to talk about here in our second day in Cambodia, but I can't go into pithy socio,economic,political observations until I talk about their most singular quality--the way these people drive is insane. On the first leg of our journey from Bangkok to Siem Reap our driver introduced us to the concept of multiple and fluid lanes of traffic. Let me explain that everything below happened.
The two lane highway we were traveling on was actually treated like a five lane highway. There are the lanes for the opposing drivers. The drivers in Thailand drive on the right, their opponents on the left. The third lane straddles the lines in the middle of the road and is used to pass by either of the drivers whenever he or she fucking feels like it. Which is a lot. The other driver pulls into the breakdown lane to allow for three cars to pass in the same spot in two different directions.
However, you should know that the breakdown lanes are utilized by any number of other road users including children on tricycles, motorcyclists, guys with a water buffalo team pulling cut bamboo, a young father, his wife and their infant all sharing the same motor scooter, and -- I am not making this up-- a guy on a motorbike with a live pig strapped around his waist.
All those sharing this road are going as fast their particular vehicle will allow . My guy was going around ninety- five while listening to an 80s compilation tape, fielding constant cell calls and sending ims with one hand because his others was busying honking his horn in case the upcoming oil truck hadn't noticed us heading head first at him. Once we had avoided a fiery death crash by two inches he needed something to do so on, he popped in a dvd of Vin Diesal's remake of T he Lost World) with subtitles and settled in for some movie time.
On both sides of this madhouse were beautiful,bucolic scenes from the lives of dep green rice paddies, hedges of brilliantly collared bushes, water buffalo grazing under a golden sun and families running road side stores that sell gasoline in Jjack Daniel's bottles and Coke of course,
No comments:
Post a Comment