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Published: November 30th -0001
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Honda RR 250cc
This bad boy was my transport for the next week. For the remainder of my trip in Cambodia I planned to tour the south coast; Takaev, Kampot & Sihanoukville....and what better way than on a Honda 250RR dirt bike!
So in the morning I hired the bike for $10/per day, packed my daypack with a few things for the week and set off.
First stop: Kampot, via Takaev
This journey is pretty straight forward, there are three highways out of the capital of Thnom Phen heading south, cunningly nammed; highway 2, highway 3, oh and highway 21. It is the middle one, highway 2, that I was to take to Kampot and so off I went. Now I tend to pride myself on my Aboriginal-like sense of direction, however, on this occasion as I rode along taking in the surroundings, I would say it was a good 45mins to an hour before I realised that I had been riding, dumb and dumber style, down the wrong highway towards the Vietnamese border. The first clue, well, the only clue that I was going the wrong way was...........well, the large river running along beside the road. I'd noticed this river on the map, running adjacent to highway 21, NOT highway 2 that i was supposed to be on and I'd noticed the river as I was riding along, was even admiring it for a while, but it was still a good 45mins of riding along in my little dream world before I put two and two together, so I pulled over to ask for some help.
So up until now, everybody I had encountered in SE Asia spoke a certain amount of English, enough English. This was my first experience with people who spoke absolutely no English and from what I could gather, had probably never left their village either. So it went like this: I would point at the road, point at the map, then talk at them in English, and they would respond by, looking at the map, talking to each other, then talking at me in Cambodian. This all quickly regressed into the strangest game of charades I ever been a part of, and if you've even spent Christmas at my house, that's up against some pretty stiff competition. So I really wasn't getting very far, even my German direction skills, which have gotten me so far in life (??), were of no use here. So I turned around and went back the way I'd come, stopping at a shop with some English advertising in the window to ask for help. Was able to find some people here who spoke a certain amount of English, or a least understood what I was trying to ask, with my charades skills now fully honed I was able to figure out that I could cut across from highway 21 and join the much desired highway 2. However, F%$k that, I had just gotten myself lost on National Highways, I was not about to start cutting cross country along some dirt road to end up in some village where I might get eaten, ok, maybe this is unlikely, but I was already now pushed for time so didn't want to get more lost. So I headed back towards the point where highway 2 became highway 21 and was able to get back on track.
In my defense here, I should point out that it is not at all obvious what exactly constitutes a national highway, and what constitutes and dirt track with some huts on the side. In addition, map reading here isn't that easy either, anyone who's tried those spacial awareness puzzles, like you get on psychometric tests where you have a weird shape and you have to figure out which one it matchs up with out of 3 or 4 other, similarly weird shapes. This is pretty much what its like trying to match a road name on a building with a road name on the map in this language.
Anyway, back on the right road I had some serious ground to make up so it was throttle back and off I went. I skipped through Takeav and straight onto Kampot, arriving about 5:30pm, with the journey taking about 6hrs. This is not bad going if you ignore my de-tour and take into account my regular stops along the way for photo's, water breaks, and stops to chat a bit with the locals about Cambodia's political climate, global warming and similar such topics of conversation.
I arrived into Kampot caked in dirt and happy for a shower.
This was a fun way to get from A to B and if nothing else, I can confidently say I will clean up at chirades this Christmas!!
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His borther
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Map reading
Must be hard reading a map and deciding which road to take when there is 3 roads on it ... Shell must be real happy with their grad intake this year!