"Highway to the Danger Zone" and the road to Kampot

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It was announced this morning that the former king, and father of the current king, His Majesty King Norodom Sihanouk passed away in Beijing of an apparent heart attack. The 90 year old was credited with gaining Cambodia’s independence from France in 1953. Now I know where Sihanoukville got its name.

Now what other blogger keeps you up on world news.

Sooner or later I am going to learn to get a prescription for some kind of sedative before I get on the roads in this country. Even though now that I think about it, I don’t think you need a prescription to get anything in this country. My car picked me up this morning for the 3 hour drive to Kampot and this time I got a younger guy wearing these sunglasses from Top Gun, and I was immediately nervous. He was quite the road ninja, darting in and out of traffic while I tried to look small in the back seat. Riding here is like watching a plane crash, you don’t want to look, but you can’t help it. It can only be described as a constant stream of close calls. The icing on the cake came on the main road from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh right before you make the cutoff to Kampot. While following this Range Rover who also was driving on the edge also, the Range Rover was easing out constantly trying to pass this slower car but with no luck. While he was traveling the center line checking his options he suddenly swerved back into our lane because there was a cow, yes a cow, walking the yellow line of the highway totally oblivious to the constant stream of cars and horns. It happened so fast that my driver swerved left and the mirror on the passenger door hit the back of the cow causing it so slam into the window, I could literally count every freckle on that cow’s rear end as it passed within inches of my window. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, and now we are in the wrong lane of traffic with 2 wheels in the dirt and 2 on the pavement still flying and now cars are passing us on the wrong side. Somehow he managed to keep the car under control and find a spot to swerve back to the other side of the road without hitting anyone head on. I tactfully and gracefully leaned over to the front and said SLOW DOWN!!! I don’t think he understood what I said, but I think he knows what I said. Luckily the cutoff was about 2 miles down the road.

In what can only be described as fitting, at the cutoff they have a big statue in the middle that you go around – it was a statue of 2 white cows. Probably a memorial to one of the relatives of the cow we passed in the road.

The road after the cutoff was heaven for me because it was so bad, he could not drive fast. The other nice thing is there was very little traffic, I guess nobody goes that way. When I say the road is bad, it looked like it had been carpet bombed by a fleet of B-52’s recently. You almost had to crawl along dodging and weaving. As we got close to Kampot the road did get better.

Made it to the hotel in what only can be described as record time, and in one piece. I am staying at the Riki-Tiki-Tavi, I just fell in love with the name. How can you have a bad time at a place with that name. The place is great, right on the river, the room is so nice.

After walking about town I think the term sleepy fits. There is very little traffic, you feel safe crossing the road. This town beats Battambang with the old French architecture. You can just walk along and get a feel for what this place looked like 50 years ago. This is a cool little town.

No matter where you travel in Cambodia, for some reason when 2 major roads come together, instead of installing a traffic light, they put a round-a-bout and then erect some statue or memorial in the middle. I cannot even count how many I have seen on this trip alone, including the cows today. It all culminated today when strolling about I found this round-a-bout with a statue of a giant Durian. Why would you build a monument to a stinky piece of fruit that is banned most everywhere. I can only come to one conclusion – they are running out of things to memorialize

Tomorrow I have a tuk tuk lined up for a day of sightseeing and a visit to the nearby coastal town of Kep. I talked to the owner of the hotel, this really nice lady from Holland and she is going to set me up with a motorbike for a day of exploring on my own on Wednesday. It cost $15 for 24 hours, how cheap is that.

Happy Travels, Don

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Comments

[ann]

cow
That was the funniest thing I have heard all week. Made me laugh out loud. I can just see you in that car gazing out at that cow's rear end. Too funny!