Getting your kicks on National Route 6 (just avoid the livestock)

When it came time to make the trek across the country from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, I had two options.  I could either get a tuk-tuk to the main bus station and sit through a cramped six hours of wailing infants and Khmer soap operas played on the little main screen at shattering volumes, or I could hire a driver.

This sounds decadent, I know, but I just found the idea of getting in a nicely maintained car, zipping down to the capital in a mere four hours, being able to stop and buy fruit or water at my leisure, and then getting deposited at my hotel in Phnom Penh a lot more appealing.  I’ve done the long-distance bus thing before, believe me, and I’ll do it again, just not this time. 

I offer you one such example: at age seventeen I found myself squeezed three people to a two-person seat on a glorified school bus run by a Tanzanian bus company with a record for killing at least two people a year, windows rolled down to get some kind of a breeze in there and red dust pouring in as a result.  The driver, when he stepped on board, looked to be about my age, with the added bonus of having extremely red eyes, and he went on to keep his hand to the horn for most of the next eight hours over what I can assure you is not the best-paved road on earth.  The bathroom on our first stop was a trough in a concrete box with no windows, the smell so exquisitely awful that to this day I can remember it in perfect detail, and the bathroom on our second stop was literally a ditch on the side of the road where Elizabeth, the mother of my host family, held up a kanga to shield me from the eyes of Tanzanians who were apparently curious to see what a white girl squatting in the dirt looked like.  I also spent most of the ride staring back at a tiny girl of about three who would not take her eyes off me, or off my pale skin and ridiculous-looking hair, while behind me, another slightly older child would reach out tentatively to brush the ends of my ponytail, no doubt imagining that he was being subtle.  There were animals strapped to the roof and hawkers shoving groundnuts and oranges at us through the windows every time we came to a stop and utter bedlam when we finally pulled into the station in Kariakoo, a neighborhood in Dar that is, shall we say, definitely not on the tourist radar.

So, yes, I am quite familiar with long-distance developing world bus travel, thanks.

Young, tough 'n dirty backpacking days.  Long-distance buses were definitely ridden.

But, given that I’m an adult and I’m on vacation and I wanted those two extra hours in Phnom Penh, I opted for the car.

It was definitely quieter and more comfortable than the bus; however, it become obvious very fast that my chauffeur was driving as if his pay were directly linked to how quickly he got me to the capital.  Our first very brief stop was just outside Siem Reap to fill up the car and buy water, where he bought three cans of the Cambodian equivalent of Red Bull, finishing the first in one fast, violent chug before stepping back behind the wheel.  I’m not sure if it was this or some other substance that had him twitching his head, sniffling, and blinking rapidly, but the guy was turned up.  Nice, of course, courteous, and very turned up.  For a while I watched through the windshield, admiring and fascinated by his lighting-quick reflexes and weaving manoeuvers, as we ducked in and out of our lane, skirting massive shipping trucks, fellow sedans, tuk-tuks, motos, bicycles, pedestrians, and herds of cows with every flick of the turn signal, and then settled into the backseat, assured that he knew what he was doing.

The thing about National Route 6 is that, while it may be the most important route in the country, running between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and then on to the Thai border, it’s a stretch to even call it a two-lane road.  There is a ribbon of asphalt wide enough for two mid-sized cars, maybe two Range Rovers at a stretch, to drive next to each other, wide shoulders of red dirt, and nothing in the way of a dividing line down the middle.  There are also a lot of other things on National Route 6 apart from cars, i.e. the aforementioned tuk-tuks, motos, bicycles, pedestrians, and livestock, and of course there isn’t really space for them to be on the paved bit along with the cars.  Instead of dropping off to the right, onto the red dirt, they tend to stay put, leaving the passing up to the car or truck, while at the same time everyone in a car is trying to pass the slow drivers.  This turns the middle part of the asphalt into a free-for-all, an anarchic game of chicken.

When you look at a map, you see that National Route 6 runs through one or two towns and a handful of villages.  What the little black dots don’t show is that it literally runs right through the middle of each of them, and the central market is set up so that the stalls are maybe two feet from the edge of the road.  This was a source of frustration for my driver, who would gun the engine to 95 in the hopes of passing the sputtering tuk-tuk in front of us before we hit the oncoming cement truck and before we got to the village, realize at the last minute that the tuk-tuk wasn’t going to be able to pull off to the side, and slam on the brakes.

The other thing about National Route 6 is that it’s not entirely paved.  Most of it is, to be fair, and pleasantly pothole-free, but there were a few occasions on which I started bouncing around and looked outside to see that we were driving over dirt or gravel.  It’s probably worth mentioning that Cambodia doesn’t have any traffic signals, either.  Not in Phnom Penh, not in Siem Reap, not anywhere (even Tanzania has one or two).  Both of those—the lack of paving and the lack of stoplights—should give you an idea of where Cambodia is developmentally, glossy Siem Reap spas and all.  (Edit: I feel really stupid for this, but there are actually traffic signals in Phnom Penh.  I just didn't fully absorb it because no one pays any attention to them.  But they're there, at least.)

As for horn etiquette, Cambodia uses a different system than the West.  My driver preferred to use it for telling people to get out of the way, thanking them for getting out of the way, and scaring animals off the road.  Others appeared to use it as a turn signal.  So it is indeed different, but I’m not wholly sure of the actual rules.

By the time we pulled up to the Blue Lime hotel in Phnom Penh, I felt as though I had gotten an interesting (and comfortable) look into Cambodian long-distance driving.  When you’re in a bus, you don’t get that same driver’s-eye view, and you don’t get the adrenaline rush of watching an ongoing truck full of chickens approaching at full speed.  Plus  I had those two extra hours to enjoy the afternoon walking through the city’s leafy, genteel streets.  I thanked my driver, who smiled, sniffled, and waved at me before getting back into his car and gunning it to 60 miles an hour down the narrow alley.