Last time I came down to Phnom Penh it took me 9 & half hours by bus. This was because there was an ASEAN meeting & a certain re-elected north american president & "leader of the free world" was in town so they had shut ALL roads.
The journey hadn't started well with the discovery that my headphones were broken (the fifth set to die here) & I was therefore unable to drown out the karaoke & violent chinese films. Cambodia has not been kind to my electronic equipment, as well as the headphones I have been through 3 iPods, 2 cameras, one phone, one kindle, and had the whole bottom part of my laptop (bar the hard drive) replaced. I am feeling slightly more buddhist about material possessions - especially electronics.
I was sat next to a man - who was actually sat in my window sit but I didn't have the energy to challenge him - who must have extraordinary enormous testicles as he was sitting with his legs so far apart he was occupying both his (really mine) & my (really his) seat. He also seemed quite insecure about his testicles too, as he had to keep checking they were still there. On the other side of the aisle was a man who was coughing, hawking & spitting into a bag for the whole 9 & a half hour journey. I think he may have TB - after this journey I suspect I may have TB too.
When R called me to say that he had left one &a half hours before me but was now stuck at the edge of Phnom Penh because all the roads were shut for security I knew skipping lunch & not weeing at the last bus stop were both grave errors.
Apparently the knowledge that Mr President was flying in to town & that all the roads were closed had been received but not processed by the transport companies - hundreds of vehicles ground to a halt on the perimeter of Phnom Penh, there was no plan B.
R wanted to know if our gridlocked buses were close to each other so perhaps we would share a tuk tuk but there was a lot of traffic in between 10 30 am when he left & my midday departure. My mobile phone battery died. I switched to my UK mobile.
Moto drivers were asking for $10 to take passengers the last 5 km into the city, my well endowed neighbour muttered in khmer that for that price you could get the bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh AND back again. Supply & demand - the laws of capitalism.
Every hour or so we would move to a different place at which to remain stationary. I would say this was in order to change the scenery except that it was pitch black by this point. It was during this long 3 hours that J let me know that the room I had booked at the guest house was not available & I had no room to stay in. I wasn't too concerned as it looked like we would all be sleeping on the bus at this rate.
Then an extraordinary thing happened - the bus driver had an idea. It was a good one but would have been an even better one if he had it 3 hours earlier & shared it with the hundreds of other buses also waiting for miles along the main roads into PNH. The idea was as the best ideas usually are very simple - lets go the other way around!
So we did just that which made 3 and half hours of unnecessary waiting even more annoying. My UK mobile died. This meant not only was I unable to share R's annoyance at his fellow countrymen's incompetence but I was also unable to broadcast my annoyance to various friends scattered around the planet.
I arrived at my guest house & J kindly shared her room & bed with me. The following morning we flapped around trying to find the lost room key, which J eventually found hanging from the key hole on the outside of the door. It would appear that I wasn't the only one in need of a holiday.
I walked to the office that morning as all the main boulevards were intermittently shut for various motorcades related to the ASEAN meeting. At the intersection between street 214 (where the URC office is) & Norodom the road was closed for a motorcade. A convoy of police motorbikes & cars sped by followed by black limousines. The cambodian police - a vision in khaki with round, shiny, tin hats & the ASEAN volunteers - who looked like boy scouts with little red flags, indicated to the stopped traffic that they could go just as the second half of the motorcade sped towards the intersection.
I don't know whether it was the "NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo........." of the police, the frantic whistle blowing & flag waving of the boy scouts, the high speed, 'forward-wind' quality to the swerving & weaving of the motos as they tried to continue to cross the intersection regardless or the astonished expression on the motorcade's european cargo but at this point I just completely lost it.
I was crying with laughter in the street, sobbing silently & struggling to breath with all my hysteria. The tuk tuk drivers who hang outside the office & only ever say "you want tuk tuk lady?"to me, even asked me if I was alright. Only a person in need of a holiday would find a near-miss multi-vehicle pandemonium that hysterical. I still have a little chuckle & smile to myself thinking about it now.
It was just so beautifully, incompetently, chaotically Cambodian.
Unfortunately the week got worse before I got my much needed break, but that's another blog....
Apparently the knowledge that Mr President was flying in to town & that all the roads were closed had been received but not processed by the transport companies - hundreds of vehicles ground to a halt on the perimeter of Phnom Penh, there was no plan B.
R wanted to know if our gridlocked buses were close to each other so perhaps we would share a tuk tuk but there was a lot of traffic in between 10 30 am when he left & my midday departure. My mobile phone battery died. I switched to my UK mobile.
Moto drivers were asking for $10 to take passengers the last 5 km into the city, my well endowed neighbour muttered in khmer that for that price you could get the bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh AND back again. Supply & demand - the laws of capitalism.
Every hour or so we would move to a different place at which to remain stationary. I would say this was in order to change the scenery except that it was pitch black by this point. It was during this long 3 hours that J let me know that the room I had booked at the guest house was not available & I had no room to stay in. I wasn't too concerned as it looked like we would all be sleeping on the bus at this rate.
Then an extraordinary thing happened - the bus driver had an idea. It was a good one but would have been an even better one if he had it 3 hours earlier & shared it with the hundreds of other buses also waiting for miles along the main roads into PNH. The idea was as the best ideas usually are very simple - lets go the other way around!
So we did just that which made 3 and half hours of unnecessary waiting even more annoying. My UK mobile died. This meant not only was I unable to share R's annoyance at his fellow countrymen's incompetence but I was also unable to broadcast my annoyance to various friends scattered around the planet.
I arrived at my guest house & J kindly shared her room & bed with me. The following morning we flapped around trying to find the lost room key, which J eventually found hanging from the key hole on the outside of the door. It would appear that I wasn't the only one in need of a holiday.
I walked to the office that morning as all the main boulevards were intermittently shut for various motorcades related to the ASEAN meeting. At the intersection between street 214 (where the URC office is) & Norodom the road was closed for a motorcade. A convoy of police motorbikes & cars sped by followed by black limousines. The cambodian police - a vision in khaki with round, shiny, tin hats & the ASEAN volunteers - who looked like boy scouts with little red flags, indicated to the stopped traffic that they could go just as the second half of the motorcade sped towards the intersection.
I don't know whether it was the "NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo........." of the police, the frantic whistle blowing & flag waving of the boy scouts, the high speed, 'forward-wind' quality to the swerving & weaving of the motos as they tried to continue to cross the intersection regardless or the astonished expression on the motorcade's european cargo but at this point I just completely lost it.
I was crying with laughter in the street, sobbing silently & struggling to breath with all my hysteria. The tuk tuk drivers who hang outside the office & only ever say "you want tuk tuk lady?"to me, even asked me if I was alright. Only a person in need of a holiday would find a near-miss multi-vehicle pandemonium that hysterical. I still have a little chuckle & smile to myself thinking about it now.
It was just so beautifully, incompetently, chaotically Cambodian.
Unfortunately the week got worse before I got my much needed break, but that's another blog....
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