The streets of Phnom Penh
Hello Little light houses,
Hope all is well and so forth.
Now, I know that on occasion I can give Sam a bit of a hard time, however after the last two days I am forced to say this; the boy has nerves of steel.
Yesterday (was it really only yesterday?) we hired a motorbike and took to the streets, now Sam is a good rider and normally there wouldn’t be a problem, however this city doesn’t really have any hard and fast rules.
For example; you drive on the right side of the road..most of the time. You don’t run through a red light…unless you’re in a hurry. You don’t turn up a one way street…unless that’s where you want to go. And another thing people here do not think about motorcycles the same as they do at home. For example at home a motorbike is not a six person family car. Nor is it appropriate vehicle to transport huge gas bottles, massive glass panels, large cupboards etc.
Also a side note to the craziness- we saw a truck piled 6 tables high tightly packed together. On top of this leaning tower of Pisa was about 4-5 small kids, 10-12 years old, now Sam and I wondered what they could possibly be doing on top of the tables, until we realised that their job was to make sure that the legs of the table were not caught in the electricity cables. (The cables are insulated here…you hope.)
Anyway so the roads are crazy, with the right of way going to the biggest barge-arse. Sam naviagets this beautifully, like a pro right from the get-go. Then this morning we had our first encounter with the Law. we were pulled over by the police, and told that we needed to go to the police station, when we looked like this was clearly not something that we were going to do, he said “or” we could pay an on the spot fine (imagine that). By the way our offence was driving down a one way street the wrong way-I’ll pay that, I mean generally bad idea, however in our defence there was two lanes of traffic going in opposite directions.) The fine was $20 US. We only had about 10 USD on us I tried for that but he took our Riel as well and left us broke. we are now doing what others do, ride in the middle and don’t make eye contact!
We have heard of this charity group that goes and feeds the kids that live in the City dump. So we will check that out tomorrow.
Alright my lovelies.
Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.
Rose
p.s I got my first injury today, no not from the bike, but embarrasingly enough from falling over an uneven curb, just gave me a fright and other people a laugh and grazed my ankle bone pretty badly. Sam looked after it and I think I will survive. I’ll get back to you on it.
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