2005 yamaha XT 230. Exploring north of river. Grit thru pnom penh traffic (this took some balls believe me), cross a ferry. My niece, Nit is riding with Yves, we arrive in the calm space of the country just outside of pp where my older cousin lives. I take off after Yvie is settled. My cousins wife asks me where I am going and I just say north. I wonder if it’d be realistic to go up to kampong cham and back. The dirt road turns into pavement. Trucks bearing everything from mortor to cows rumble past rolling into the lane going the opposite direction to pass slower riders, honking all the while. Here its as if right of way goes to the bigger vehicle, if you are smaller you just have to get out of the way. I feel a little bit cockier on this bike. In Cambodia, there are two categories of motorcycles. Literally, “moto touch” and “moto thom”, respectively small motorcycle and big motorcycle. The small motorcycles include the semi automatic motorbikes and scooters and the big motorcycles are pretty much everything else, but you won’t see them as often. The motorbikes are the people’s bikes, it’s what most people can afford. Big motorycycles belong to the more affluent, the police, and pretty exclusively the domain of expats and foreigners. I always notice so much more when I’m on a bike. To me, a motorcycle is the happy marriage of a bike and a car, you get the freedom of the open air but cover the mileage of a car in about as much time. I start daring to pass other slower lane hogging cars by veering into the adjacent lane with oncoming vehicles. The trick is timing, do you have time to clear the lane before the oncoming cars get too close? It always feels like your playing chicken with unwitting challengers. I slow down to take in the view, there is, I swear, a pagoda every 15 minutes. The ubiquity is two fold, one is to provide places for the dead and their tombs and two to provide housing and possibly a vocation( at least temporarily )to the poor and orphaned, as novice monks and property care takers. I ride for an hour and veer off on a random dirt road. Would really like to be next to a river right now and I know its just to my left. I stop before a steep incline to the river bank and I’m immediately surrounded by 10 kids. I sit down to write and I swear the longer I sit the more surround me. They are curious and it strikes me how odd I must look to them even though I do look like them. A dark skinned woman with half of her head shaved off, wearing a cut up t shirt, riding a “big motorcycle” ( to paint a better picture of what an apparently big deal this is, 10 years when I was last he re, it was most appropriate to ride behind a rider with both your legs to one side - not straddling - and if you are a lady riding it has to be a scooter that allows you to set both feet firmly on the floor legs together as much as possible), and writing, by herself no less. I listened all the while to them talk and pretended not to understand. They asked each other about my origins, how old I was, how much my motorcycle cost, whether I was a boy or a girl - this got me the most - but most of all how much was my motorcycle worth. I think it was a fun guessing game. So after a while of them surrounding me like a bunch of lemmings, some one brings up swimming so I say in Khmer ok let’s go swimming! We all run into the water, me with all my clothes on. Several fishing boats are docked including a broken one that the boys use as a launching pad. I answer their questions except for the one about whether I’m a boy or a girl because it’s funny to me that they don’t know and I wonder how long it would not be apparent. Well, it lasted the whole time i was there. Its striking to be in a country in which masculinity and feminity is so clear cut that taking on different gender roles can cause confusion about your sex. That swim was definitely the highlight of that ride. Afterwards, I just hoped I rode long enough for my sopping wet clothes to dry. And it nearly did by the time I got back.
