Dusty Roads

Did I mention that it was really, really dusty in Cambodia? The main road between Bangkok and Siem Reap is a heavily traveled road by tour buses, and in Thailand, although the road is deteriorated, it is still in pretty good shape compared with its continuance in Cambodia. It starts off as a freshly paved highway, and for the first 30 or 40 kilometers I wondered what all the fuss about Cambodia’s roads had been. And then, it became apparent, when the bus hit a huge bump as our road transformed from freshly paved asphalt to recently graded gravel and dirt. Our buses speed didn’t falter much, and there was even the occasional water tanker spraying the dirt roads to keep down the dust, so it wasn’t too bad right away.

We rolled along at about 80 or 90 kilometers an hour, swerving left and right on this gravel road-to-be with no delineation or imposed order, other than the steady honking from our bus drivers horn. The rule seems to be honk when you are coming up behind someone, honk when you are passing someone, honk at the oncoming traffic when you are in their lane…Strangely enough, our driver rarely honked when he was stuck behind a slower moving vehicle, until he was about to pass them. This main highway was a straight shot, and it blasted right through the center of towns and villages. Whether they were a result of the road or the other way around I am unsure, but stalls and shops lined the dirt track that was a constant site of construction.

I began to notice that the dust from the roads layered everything. The structures along the road, made of different types of building materials-from concrete, to wood, to bamboo, to sheet metal- they all began to blend together in a mass of red-dust colored shambles. The corrugated metal roofing had long ago had its silver luster obscured by brownish-red dust. The continuous traffic even left a cover of dirt on the foliage along the road-from the low-standing brush to the tall palm fronds-everything melded in color with the dirt. Even some of the people, who spent their days sitting at a stall on the roadside, would begin to match their surroundings in color, their hats and scarves leaving only a slit for their eyes, and their clothing consisting of long pants and shirts. But these people were the exception. For everywhere along the way I saw children in brightly colored t-shirts playing with each other. I saw young men sitting on their freshly washed motor bikes waiting to offer a ride to the next person who walked by. I saw men showering by means of bucket and water in their yards in the evening, and during the day saw the same men working hard in the fields. Often a line of rice farmers would be visible in the distance as they worked the fields, their rattan hats all that was visible of them as they bent over and cut the plants near the water. The people’s color was in stark contrast to the dinginess of their surroundings, and it may just be an indication of the Khmer people’s resilience and ability to see a bright side to their plight in recent years.

The roads actually got worse, graduating from newly-graded gravel to washed-out, rutted dirt that hadn’t received any maintenance since the rainy season ended. The speed did lessen here, but the ride was still akin to taking a jeep four-wheeling-only with Cambodian music blaring in the background, accompanied by the driver’s singing and horn-honking. The bus ride in Cambodia from the border to Siem Reap took us about five hours, and it wore us out, both going and coming back. But it was real travel, among real people, sometimes without aircon or another white face anywhere in site-it was another country, and the people were quite friendly and accommodating. So if you are planning on visiting, save some money, take a land route, it’s about 100 dollars cheaper, and if you want to you can learn some Cambodian for free on the trip in.