The Taxi

The Shared Taxi…

On our third day in Cambodia, after 5 hours on the road and an excruciatingly slow pace of 8.4 km./hr., our odometers showed that we had only advanced 21.5 km. Ouch! It was 11:00 in the morning, and we still had 7 ½ hours of daylight to pedal only 30 km., but we were starting to doubt if we could even reach Siem Reap that day. We had to take a break from the bumps and the potholes and the painful bouncing every couple of kilometers. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! We stopped for a quick break, and as I was getting back on my bike, Stephane hailed a passing taxi. A taxi in the Cambodian countryside means 20 or 30 people piled into the back of a pick-up truck, bouncing high over the bumpy road and holding on for dear life! And what a taxi ride it was! Definitely one of the crazier experiences of my life.

If we had known that there was only 5 more kilometers of unpaved road, and that the rocky road turned into a newly paved, smooth road, we would have stuck it out. But as it was, we didn’t know. So the first part of our ride in the pick-up was on the bouncy and bumpy dirt road and seemed dangerously fast, considering the condition of the road. I was stuck up against a sharp object, making me wonder if it was more painful in the pick-up or on the bike! Mud from the mud puddles splattered our arms and came up over the windshield to hit us in the face and blur our vision. I got a mouthful of mud more than once, and each time that I thought it was cleared away, it would come again. If it wasn’t the mud from the puddles, it was the dirt flying into the eyes, and I learned to close my eyes and keep my face down (some of the locals wear face scarves that cover everything but the eyes – this protects against the mud).

I found that it was better to close my eyes, anyway, because I preferred not knowing what was coming up. Taxi drivers around the world are known to be a bit crazy, but this one must have been the craziest of them all. He was like the Mario Andretti of Cambodia. He layed on the horn non-stop, urging all other obstacles out of his way, whether they be large trucks, buses, bicycles, motorcycles, other pick-ups, dogs, or even cows. “Beep! Beep! Beep!” we heard for one hour, as we went flying over the potholes and brushed against branches, ate dust and mud, and occasionally came screeching to a halt. At one point, he actually dove into a ditch off the side of the paved road to pass a car, honking all the way, and as we bumped along, I saw to my horror that there was a cow just ahead of us and that our driver didn’t seem to be slowing down in the slightest. With the cow just in front of us and the car just to the side of us, I closed my eyes and held my breath and hoped for the best. “Beep! Beep! Beep!” We leapt back onto the road at the last second, and I thought I might literally bounce over the side of the truck, where I was perched precariously on the edge with one hand holding on and the other arm around a young, ten-year old girl, who in turn had her arm around my waist and her head buried in my lap.

Despite a few cries of surprise, no one had fallen overboard, and we continued on at what seemed like break-neck speed, reaching Siem Reap in little over one hour.