Along the way to Siem Reap

 Driving in Cambodia is wild and crazy and you really have to be paying attention. Paying attention, not so much to the beautiful countryside or the road rules, but to what people are carting around on the back of their mopeds, trucks, bicycles, and tuk-tuks. 

The major road-- and the only road--into Siem Reap was recently paved.  Even so, it still took 2.5 hour to get there and was about 200 km from the border crossing.  When the road was a dirt road, during the rainy season, the same journey could expect to take about 7-8 hours. 

On this road, one quickly becomes an expert on how to use the horn.  

The horn is used a device to tell other people ahead of you on the road that you are coming up on them quickly and they better move over to what is, in reality, the hard shoulder.  However, in Cambodia, it is another lane, and where the tuk-tuks, motorcycles, mopeds, and bicycles are. 

And should you not move into the hard shoulder fast enough, or can't because there is already 3 tuks-tuks, a car, and 2 bicyclists there, the opposite lane works as a passing lane, even if a larger truck is heading straight for you.  You can be assured that the other driver sees you and will slow down only long enough to allow you to shoot back into your proper lane, as the other driver is about to the do the same thing on his side of the road.

And what did we see on the backs of some of these motorcycles and mopeds? EVERYTHING: baskets full of fruit or wood; pens of live animals (usually chicks and piglets); collected bags of plastic bottles; people; mattresses; 30+ dead but unplucked chickens; and pigs.  I should be more clear: Live pigs.  Wrapped in fencing material to hold them steady as they are transported to the town's only abattoir, several kilometers down the road. Yeah...  so glad I am not a pig in Cambodia...