I was starting to think that this day was never going to arrive. Dave had graciously offered to let me ride his dirtbike around Cambodia and all I needed to do was pick it up off his mate Robbie in Phnom Penh and then get on the road. In the end I was in Cambodia for just over two weeks as I had to organise to meet Robbie, get the bike serviced, buy a decent map, do some research, and drink and go out a lot. I can tell you know it takes a few days finding sturdy size 13-14 boots (euro 48), a dirtbike jersy, and a compass in this town.
So the packing list for my adventure is as follows - Yamaha TTR 250 raid, clothes (duh), helmet, gloves, swiss army knife, electrical tape, first aid kit, gastro kit, half arsed toolkit, compass, map, Adventure Cambodia dirtbike book, lonely planet, $1 plastic poncho and a mosqito net.
It should also really include other things like spare inner tube, pump, chain links, tension tool, clutch and brake levers, zip ties and other spares.
I would of loved to find some real dirtbike boots and body armor but unfortunately that was impossible.
And the most important thing - a sense of adventure was all I really needed. some would say death wish I guess.
It is certainly an interesting experience riding a dirtbike for the first time in 10 years plus around Phnom Penh.
The traffic is a little hectic with no real rules. After a while it all starts coming back to me and I cut through the traffic with relative ease. The bike is running well. It's feels weird to be on a 4 stroke though and it has absolutely no power compared to the good old 250cc two strokes that we rode around as teenagers. I miss the feeling of hitting power band and hanging on, although that is probably not a good thing in the traffic here.
The ride from Phnom Penh is a very straightforward affair and a nice easy trip to get used to things before I really start hitting the more remote areas in the North in the next few weeks.
It is roughly 230km and is all tarmac and well signposted. Sounds like a walk in the park.
It takes a while to battle out of the traffic and get to the outskirts of town where you can start to pick up the pace.
There is a lot of traffic of all sorts, trucks, buses, vans, heaps of landcruisers and lexus 4wds, motorbikes, tractors, ox carts, bicycles and more.
I quickly learn that any vehcile with blue and red number plates are government vehicles and as such drive wherever the hell they want and at warp speed.
You really have to ride defensively but assertively so that people really know what you are going to do even if they have no idea what they are doing.
I figure the best way to avoid most of the traffic is to be almost the quickest vehicle on the road. It sounds a bit silly I guess, but you don't have to worry about traffic appearing from behind you without warning. It's also not hard to be quicker than most as there are a lot of trucks, buses and clapped out 100cc motorbikes. The only vehciles really going faster than about 70km/h are cars and 4wds.
On-coming traffic has absolutely no concept of you having a side of the road to yourself and they will overtake at any time forcing you off the road and onto the dirt verge.
I found a good tactic was to wait until a government car overtook me and then hang about 100 meters back from it. It offered a bit of protection as oncoming traffic wouldn't pull out as frequently. Although sometimes they do it anyways. Check the photo of the trucks that are 3 abreast coming straight down the wrong side.
This tactic works until you hit a long straight clear section and the car usually speeds up to 160km/h or so and leaves you behind. The bike doesn't feel that great over about 120km/h and I get a massive fright at one point as a lexus blasts past me when I didn't realise he had caught up.
There are a few other scares along the way involving various things coming out onto the road.
I even see guys sitting on the edge of the road having a smoke as if it was an extension of their living room. There are a lot of houses built right up to the edge of the road and the scariest moments comes when a dog runs out in front of me when I am doing 100km/h or so. I hit the brakes and lock the rear up and miss it by a foot or so. That would of been messy. Damn, I wish I had that body armor and full boots, but all you can do is laugh it off and keep yourself looking a long way down the road. The same thing happens about 10km later on, but this time its a puppy. I see it run out, start to brake and hit the horn to make sure it runs off nice and fast. This back fires and it turns back and runs in front of me again as I get closer. I wonder what a dogs life expectancy is in this country.
There are plenty of cows crossing the road and also just grazing for grass all along the edges.
Water buffalo, oxen and ox carts, chickens, dogs, motorbikes with trailers, kids on bicycles, kids on motorbikes, strange agricultural machines, earth moving equipment, people walking and more are everywhere down the road, which certainly makes the journey a lesson in concentration.
I was probably forced off the road onto the verge more than ten times. You are riding along at 100km/h or so and the oncoming traffic just takes both the lanes (and more sometimes) and you are expected to give way. You hit the brakes to slow down to say 60km/h or so and aim for the verge. The dirt makes the bike float around a bit and once the traffic has passed you get back onto the tarmac and speed up. The dirt is a slightly different surface each time and the lip where it meets the tarmac is as tall as 20cm or so in places. I also do a fair amount of overtaking on the dirt verge as it is safer at times than using the tarmac. It's fun to blast down the dirt on the inside past 3-4 trucks that are holding up 10 cars and whole bunch of other traffic. The cars invariably catch you as soon as they get past though.
The journey takes me around 3 or 3.5 hours with one fuel stop and a lot of quick stops to snap photos. The odometer is showing a distance of 251km and I am dying for a beer or two.
I snap a picture of the first beach I come to just as the sun is setting before heading through town to try and find a place I can sleep and store the bike with some safety. Having the bike means you really need to find somewhere you can park it off the street. Plus Dave would kill me if it got nicked.
I am just going to hang around on the beach for a few days before heading back to Phnom Penh via Kampot, Kep and the Bokor mountains. After that I will be riding for a couple of weeks in a huge loop around Cambodia and will get to visit some much more remote areas in the North. The adventure really begins in earnest then and I will put up new posts as I can get to some decent internet cafes.
cheers
Z
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