What is the strangest part of this picture. The kid? The tuk tuk I am in? Nope—the fact that there is actually a light at the intersection. Most intersections in the city of Phnom Penh have no lights (or even stop signs). Even the major traffic circle in the city has no traffic lights—much less any traffic guidance.
The lack of traffic lights or even rules of the road (Want to drive in the wrong lane into on-coming traffic or dart across the street? No problem, everyone is doing it!) makes driving there pretty crazy. I have been there 4 times and I still have no idea how it works. That is the main reason I have a driver to take me around.
The scene: average intersection in Phnom Penh. The actors: lots of cars, some SUVs, some big trucks, people on bikes, tuk tuk, swarms of scooters, people walking, people carrying things across the road, people pushing or pulling carts, bikes, people with bike taxis, and if you are lucky an elephant. The title: normal day in Phnom Penh (yawn).
The result is—to my eyes at least—chaos. But it somehow works out. That said, there are a minimum of 2-3 deaths per day from the traffic.
The other thing I learn more and more about each time I am in Phnom Penh is police corruption. The cops there are paid about $50 a month. According my driver there it takes a minimum of $120 to be able to have a place to live and food to eat. So the cops close that gap through extortion and bribes. If you are stopped on the road you need to pay up or in the case of my driver if you want to sell things in markets then you have to pay up.
The other result of low police salaries is that being a cop is not looked on as being a good job and the cops themselves are not seen as overly upstanding people. In a country like Cambodia that is bad. The rich there can do anything and the cops provide absolutely no check. There have been a few times I have read stories in the local Phnom Penh paper that go something like this: rich person or his bodyguard gets into accident, they get pissed, they get out with a gun and shoot into the air or at people, cops look the other way, and all parties go on their merry way. Usually the cops say afterward they cannot intervene or risk getting fired because the rich person will pressure their bosses.
If you cannot tell from this description so far, Cambodia is very poor. Example, garbage collection works like this: collect your garbage and then along with your neighbors dump it in a pile on the street (let stray dogs eat it during the day) and the garbage truck will come with workers and shovels to pick it up at night. The city is run down in a lot of areas and it is pretty dark (literally and figuratively) in many areas. But there is an energy to the whole thing that I don’t find back home.
A random story that is completely normal in the city. I was with 3 business partners from Thailand walking back from lunch. And as we go into our customer’s office we see a (stray?) dog. It was foaming at the mouth and shaking as it ran. Now most people would run away. But the locals just stopped and looked. In fact, there was a guy on a scooter and a guy on foot trying to chase the dog down. Why? Beats me.
Finally, the thing that stuck me on this trip was—in a word—rhythm. I think after being in Asia for almost 14 months I have blended into the rhythm of things. Being in Phnom Penh with all of its craziness, traffic, heat, dirt, and humidity felt completely normal to me. The only way to explain it was that I felt like I was finally part of that rhythm.
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