Northward Bound

Negotiating traffic in Phom Penh is the perfect way to learn how to ride a motorcycle, like how I've always assumed learning to drive stick in San Francisco would be: you'll either get it right or quickly destroy yourself. I actually executed a kickass wheelie pulling away from the rental place, my front wheel lifting no less than a foot and a half off the road. Knowing the exact soft spots of the throttle and clutch within twenty seconds of starting the motor, I figured I could continue learning at that pace and be backflipping across the Southeast Asian peninsula by bedtime.

Stop signs in the city are completely absent, so if your street reaches a main thoroughfare and there isn't a traffic light, the Khmer method for crossing is to inch forward, not unlike frogger but without the option of moving back, until people slow and let you through. If you're turning left and you don't feel like putting in the effort, you can just drive on the wrong side of the street until the opportunity to merge right shows itself. With streets clogged tighter than a Brando artery, the fact that this is possible seems to defy physics, but it happens literally millions of times a day and, presumably, there are few casualties: in my week abroad, I heard not a single tire screech.

Admittedly, I was relieved to find that traffic outside the city trickles down to a single two-lane highway with a lot more breathing room. And the relatively teensy number of vehicles belching out exhaust means you can actually breathe, which was also a nice change. 250ccs of well-maintained Honda is a lot more fun than my 1hp Moped was, and no-rules Cambodian highway is a lot more accommodating than the four miles of suburb streets I rode that shitty Yamaha on before it coughed its last cough, never to start again. I managed to keep both wheels on the ground as I hauled ass (and bungeed backpack) upcountry. Before the end of the trip I came within slapping distance of dogs, chickens, cows, monkeys and an elephant either crossing the road or eating the remains of something that failed to. The horn came in handy.

Having a late start and an uncertain timeframe, I stopped only for gas, but still didn't manage to make it to Siem Reap before sundown. The last hour of the trip I rode in near darkness, my headlight doing little to illuminate the asphalt. I reassured myself that the road had been almost immaculately paved for as long as it was visible, but quickly learned that the Cambodian country nights had much worse than potholes to throw at me. What my headlamp lacked in path-lighting it made up for tenfold with insect-popularity. The thwicks and thwecks of thorax and abdomen being rent in twain on Matilda's front grew to a steady rhythm. They grew louder as the swarms massed larger, striking my helmet, and then my face through the open slot where a visor would be if I'd rented from a place that charged more than $12 a day.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and I soon discovered that a 15 foot high bus throws off about ten feet of draft behind it. I spent the last half hour hugging the bumper of an orange tour coach out of Phnom Penh, stopping four or five times, watching mysterious sparks jump from the engine's loose cowling. At top speed I calculated that, though this bus completely blocked my view of the road ahead, its enormous weight would make it a much slower braker than my 500 net pounds of man and machine. Beyond that, the Khmer highway is a very hierarchical community, and busses are top of the pile. Seeing them force oncoming traffic off the road so they could pass a slower vehicle was a frighteningly common occurrence, and I, like a limpet clinging to a blue whale or one of those tooth-picker birds on a Nile alligator, finished out my ride in the secure shadow of my orange leviathan's unchallenged strength.

I rolled into Siem Reap at what must have been nine o'clock and cruised up and down the bit of highway that cut through town eyeing hostels. None of the cheaper looking places were lit or safe-looking for Matilda, who the renters would audaciously charge $19,000 (nineteen thousand, not a typo) for if I didn't bring her back, so I pulled into a fancy looking hotel and asked the guard the rates: $20 a night. I smiled and thanked him, found an equally fancy looking but smaller hotel, and booked two nights for $16 total. I threaded a chain and padlock through Matilda's spokes, locked the gascap, de-bungeed my pack and hauled my worn-out hide up the staircase to my plush room.

When I flipped on the bathroom light to work on extricating the bugs from my tear ducts I discovered why the desk clerks had been eyeing me so uncomfortably: wiping the bugs from my face had left a bandit's mask of motorcycle grease, and the wind and gnats had left my eyes dried and bloodshot. I scrubbed my mitts raw with the gentle hotel soap, plucked a particularly troublesome earwig (they fly in Cambodia, apparently) from its place wedged in my left eyelid, washed off the grease and returned to the front desk to show the clerks my undisguised humanity. And to ask where to get a beer.

Two minutes later I was marching back from the pharmacy next door with three cans of beer, an ice cream bar and a jar of Tiger Balm. Five minutes later I was in a hot bath with two cans of beer and a popsicle stick, and within an hour I was oozing into a thick, luxurious, king-sized sleep while visions of temples danced in my head.