Motorcycles in Cambodia

It was a place I never thought I would find myself: squashed between a hired driver and my impossibly full backpack on the surprisingly hard seat of a 250cc motorcycle. The wind was in my face, the pain in my backside, the rice fields to my left and right. Did I mention I was careening down the bumpy roads of Cambodia’s countryside?

Everything had happened so quickly over dinner and drinks the night before in the capital city of Phnom Penh. After a day of sightseeing, my partner and I joined “Martin” and “Peter,” the two Cambodian motorbike drivers we had been using since our arrival in the country, for a beer at a little hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant near our guesthouse. The “beer” turned into several hours of drinking, communal dining from a large pot of vegetable-and-beef-parts soup and the brilliant idea that we should cancel our scheduled air conditioned minibus the next day to Sihanoukville in favor of renting motorcycles with Martin and Peter. The motorbikes they had been carting us around town in were simply too small and slow to cover the 253km distance to the south coast beach town. We craved adventure and liked our new friends, so it seemed a good idea despite the higher cost of renting bikes and paying drivers. With a clink of our beer bottles, it was settled.

Yet the next morning, feeling slightly hungover, I felt the first twinges of doubt as I watched Martin and Peter heave our enormous bags onto the back of the bikes and struggle to secure them with rope. Last night, the motorcycles sounded huge, plenty of room for us and the bags. Now I was looking at about six inches of space in which to cram my body.

 “OK! We go!” they called, smiling. They were obviously excited for this opportunity to be paid for driving cool bikes.

They handed us our helmets, which we had pointedly asked for, and revved up the motors. I squeezed myself on, feeling assured that at least I would not fall off from such a tight spot, and we took off down the muddy, pot-holed roads of Phnom Penh amid stares from our neighbors. I imagined it was not everyday they saw real motorcycles, especially not with Westerners and all their belongings precariously strapped on. I clung to Peter for dear life until we turned onto one of the city’s main boulevards; with its wide, smoothly paved lanes, it was perfect for speeding. Now this was fun. I smiled knowingly at the crawling buses we sped around and waved to the twenty or so locals spilling out of the windows and crouched upon the roofs. If they only knew how much better this was!  

After the second hour, however, my increasingly sore lower body demanded a stretch, and I needed a drink, having lost my water bottle miles ago when it flew off my bag. I yelled into Peter’s ear, and both bikes soon pulled in front of a tiny bamboo-thatched shack where a few men sat chatting and, evidently, selling drinks. I had noticed a few kids splashing around in a neighboring rice paddy, and as we gulped our water, they caught sight of us and scrambled over for a better look. Within minutes, more than fifteen children had slinked out of the shadows of the surrounding coconut palms to gather in front of us, staring.

To their amusement, we called out suor s’dei (“hello”) and grabbed our cameras, arousing their curiosity further. The children smiled shyly at us, unsure of what to do, but the ice was broken with the help of my partner’s digital camera. Before long, they were hamming it up in front of both cameras, posing coolly with their pals before rushing forward amid squeals of delight to glimpse themselves on the tiny LCD screen. Somewhere in the confusion, one of the little girls of the group had latched onto my side, and when she playfully grabbed my hand and smiled up at me, I decided there are few better things when traveling through a foreign land than to be the recipient of such immediate trust and acceptance. Did we really have to leave this place?

 Unfortunately, a roll of film and thirty minutes later, our drivers reminded us of the distance we had yet to go. I reluctantly mounted the bike, but it wasn’t long before we stopped again to repair a loose chain. While waiting, we lunched on fried rice and noodles at a nearby restaurant, where the delightful owner took an immediate liking to us. As she stood smiling next to our table, staring in what appeared to be fascination, she tried, via translation from Martin, to convince us to move into the house she shared with her daughter. She wouldn’t even let us pay for our four meals, so we covertly slipped the cash into her daughter’s hand. Before we climbed back on our bikes, she informed us that Kampot, our destination for the night, was only 30km away. “Not bad at all,” I thought, encouraged.

Hours later, however, it seemed our restaurant friend was either drastically mistaken or the bikes moved much slower than they appeared to. It became increasingly painful to remain on the bikes, and not just because our butts were sore. I felt an alarming new pain in my knees, legs and back, probably because I had become paranoid about my now-lopsided bag tumbling off and had been assuming various twisting positions in an effort to keep it secure. Even better, in a typical display of the country’s rainy season, the brilliantly sunny day turned stormy by mid-afternoon, and both our bodies and bags were soon mud-splashed and soaked. Each time we stopped to stretch, take photos or adjust our belongings, Martin and Peter assured us, as if they actually had a clue, that we would arrive in Kampot within an hour. Yet, two hours later, we still weren’t there. I briefly wondered if the overcrowded bus would have been both faster and more comfortable.  

In the end, over eight hours had passed before we reached Kampot and limped into our hotel rooms for the night. After paying for their dinner and accommodation, we bid Martin and Peter farewell the next morning to continue our journey by car, still 105 kilometers from Sihanoukville and unable to face the prospect of another long day on the motorcycle. We easily located a taxi driver who would get us to our destination for $5 each within three hours and promised not to overfill the car with passengers, a practice to watch out for here.

I sank back into my comfortable cushioned seat and watched small slices of Cambodian life fly by my window: small children sitting atop ox-drawn carts, wallowing water buffalo disobeying their farmers, tiny villages bordering endless flat, glossy rice fields, broken by clusters of tall coconut palms. I couldn’t help but notice all the potential photographs I was missing out on or wonder what friendly new Cambodians we might have met along the way if we had stuck with the bikes. Would those rice farmers bundling up their harvest on the side of the road have invited us in for tea? Would those small, playful children have posed for our cameras too? Maybe or maybe not, but in choosing the taxi, we had unwittingly prevented such possibilities from existing.

I reflected on the subjective nature of travel. With the decision to go somewhere comes a slew of choices regarding accommodation, travel arrangements, food, activities. The possibilities are endless on the surface, but beneath those lie infinite more—possibilities we cannot anticipate but must learn to embrace. For what is travel if not the secular answer to what is possible? Travel opens up the world to its inhabitants, and the best kind of travel—open-minded, spontaneous—makes anything feel possible. But more specifically, as I learned on my cramped motorcycle that day in Cambodia, it is often the literal act of the word—to travel, to get from place to place—which presents the most unexpected possibilities and memorable experiences… but only if we let it.