The first unbelievable thing I noticed when I initially came to Cambodia happened on the way into the city from the airport. I see this occurence literally everyday now, and I don't even think twice about it anymore, but at the time it was stunning; at the time it was frightening. It seemed to violate some unwritten rule of life. Now it just is, a part of life, a way of life for thousands of people, I supposed you'd say.
I'm talking about a bike. I'm talking about a moto, and a lady on the moto, and the tiny, fragile, living and breathing thing she was holding in her arms.
Said thing being a baby, of course.
So what's the big deal?
I don't know, call me crazy, but back in Ontario if you saw a lady riding shotgun in the rain on a little moto like the type Sweetchuck rode in Police Academy III with a kid clutched under her arm like a soggy paperback book you'd probably call the police.
I, on the other hand, being in a third-world country (and being without a phone), was not about to call the police. I was so shocked that I quickly whipped out my disposable camera and took a shot of the lady, and the baby, and the bike.
Odd, how flabbergasted I was. Natural, I guess; it would have been frightening if I hadn't have been floored, I guess.
It's weird how things juxtaposed can disarm you. A moto is no big deal, and neither is a lady riding on one. A moto with a lady with a baby riding on one -- now that's something that short-circuits your mental nerves. (The first few times you see it.)
Then you take the moto, and you multiply it by a hundred, then a thousand, and you have a picture of Phnom Penh's streets, a picture that started off bizarre and tilted and gradually became mundane, even ordinary. The saving grace here is that the population of Phnom Penh isn't really all that high -- maybe a million people. It doesn't even compare to Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh (or so I've heard.) So even though the streets are crammed tight with motos and bikes and the occasional elephant walking around (if you're down by the river), things are not
out of control.
What am I saying.
This is Phnom Penh, and it is chaos, I'll admit that. They treat traffic signals as, I don't know, recommendations. (You don't need a license to drive a moto, but even if you did, I don't think it would make that much of a difference.)
There's no chance in hell you'd catch me driving on these roads, on moto or in a car. Just today I saw a foreigner zooming down the street on his motorcycle. A traffic cop saw him coming, rushed out to the centre of the road, put on his angry, scowling face and ordered the foreigner, via a half-assed karate chop hand gesture and a sharp little bark, to stop. The foreigner, smart guy that he was, just kept on trucking.
You don't mess with Cambodian police.
People here don't have that choice. They can't afford cars, most of them, so they fit their whole families on their bikes and away they go. The most number of people I've seen on a bike (intended for two) is seven, I think. Two parents and five kids, laying on laps and standing on shoulders and tucked under various sweaty armpits, legs and arms dangling anywhere and everywhere.
Strange, what you can get used to: traffic chaos and humans scrunched together and the sight of wide-eyed little tykes clutching their fathers waist from behind as if their fingers are fastened by velcro.
Sobering, the small, everyday indignities that people can endure.
