Pigs on a motorcycle

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Squealing pigs flash by... on the back of a Honda! Dang! That's good! Live pigs! Not easy to get them up there I bet. Side by side... How do they do it??? Train them from when they are wee little porkers? Sure, that's it... pig training school....teach them to jump up on the board spanning the back seat, lie down, roll on their backs, extend fore legs and distend rear legs, then you just tie them down... No problem, pigs are smart, the right motivation I suppose they learn fast.

Or, you could just feed them a bunch of marijuana the evening before... at least that is what one inquisitive traveler told me. Makes sense, I'd have tried valium but then the weed would be just that, here a-bouts.

In Siem Reap everything gets packed on the back of a motorcycle. I saw a mattress once during my three years in Sierra Leone - I've seen at least two in six days here. Other items include: office chairs, 25 feet of pipe, full sized step ladders, 4 passengers and about 40 chickens. I've seen drivers smoking and driving at the same time. Drivers talking on their cell phones are common. As are conversations between drivers and/or passengers on two or more side by side motorcycles.

The road traffic in town has a very fluid motion to it. Motorcycles commonly drive on the far side of the wrong side of the road. Stops are fluid. Merging is a continuous event with all vehicles participating. The rule of tonnage is applied but not fully - some give and take is expected from everyone at all times. Right of way is not. There must be some sort of speed limit that everyone holds to, only occasionally do I see a moto or car going what seems to be to fast, and then they are often tooting their horns as warning.

They learn very young. Yesterday I saw a small girl, maybe three a half feet tall seated on a full sided bicycle. Every time a pedal approached the ground, her foot would loose contact with the pedal but her other foot continued the motion needed to carry through the cycle. Not easy to do, and there she was on the main road in the center of town, motorcycles, tuk tuks, cars and people all around. And she just rode on through.

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