Archive for 11 December 2011
Cambodia, part 3 – Travel around the country
(I’m in the midst of describing our first full day in Phnom Penh. However, I thought that we should take a detour to talk about the traffic…)
I love traffic in Phnom Penh.
Let’s be clear about that.
Nevertheless, I think that I probably freaked out the first time I experienced it.
Well, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but I’m sure that I was a bit nervous.
Eventually, though, you learn to relax a bit. You see that there are some common understandings and some unwritten rules. It isn’t a free-for-all.
And once you’ve relaxed, it’s actually fun to be a passenger and see that everything just sort of flows around – a big river of motos that eventually gets where it’s trying to go.
Most of the vehicles around town are either motos (motor scooters) or moto-derived. Cars are more common than they were ten years ago (especially for people looking to flaunt their status, who are charging around everywhere in their Lexuses), but they are still well outnumbered by two-wheeled transportation. When our family needed to travel somewhere around Phnom Penh, we hired moto taxis, better known as tuk-tuks. If all ten of us (five from the ordinary family, three Guests Complacent, and two parents) needed to go somewhere, we’d get two…
You really have to ride in one of these to get the full experience, but I’ve created a short video to give you some sense of how things might look. I wish that I could offer a 360° perspective.
And here is the traffic at night, as seen from our van (see below) …
One final note (for now) about travel throughout the rest of Cambodia: it didn’t leave quite the same impression on me as our travel within Phnom Penh (although if you had asked me ten years ago, I would have offered a different opinion). When we left the city, we all piled into a passenger van that Mr. Guest Complacent hired for us:
(That’s our driver on the left.)
This van went with us on three different trips outside Phnom Penh, and also got us to and from the airport. We knew it well by the time we left.
A few more photos of, in, and around tuk-tuks…
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Cambodia, part 2 – Acclimating
So – suppose you have a family with three young children and you’ve just traveled for 24 hours straight. You’re halfway around the world, and you have no clue how jet lag is going to affect you in the coming hours and days. How do you plan your schedule?
We’ll return to that question in a moment, but now let me resume the story that I started a few days ago.
Eurasian tree sparrow
Friday morning, we were all awake by 5:30 a.m., even though we had gone to bed after midnight the night before. For Ordinary Spouse and I, the memories of our previous visit to Cambodia started to come back to us. Phnom Penh has a unique morning ambiance – a combination of heat, humidity, smoke, city smell, and roosters crowing – that we had forgotten. And when we checked on the girls, they were all gathered together on one bed, looking out the windows, and taking in their new surroundings. Soon thereafter, Middle Daughter had identified her first new bird: a Eurasian tree sparrow. And we established a bit of routine that continued on and off throughout the rest of our time in Cambodia: a refreshing cold shower followed by rice, pork, and pickled veggies for breakfast.
Rice, pork, and pickled veggies
So, back to that question – how should someone plan a schedule for a jet-lagged family in a new country? Well, first leave some time unstructured in a non-stressful environment. We spent the morning doing a lot of meaningful nothingness at the home of the Guest Complacent. We got to know our 8-month-old cousin/nephew (and played with his toys), explored the house, and discovered that you could see a long way from the rooftop…
Ordinary Spouse becomes Ordinary Aunt
OS gets her bell rung
A construction worker across the street
The construction project across the street
The rooftop view (click for a much larger view)
So that’s the first part of schedule planning: intentional relaxation. But relaxation is easy in the morning when everyone is awake. What happens in the afternoon when everyone is ready to nap… for the rest of the day? According to the Guest Complacent, that’s when you have to go out and do something!
And so, Friday afternoon after lunch we set out to see the Royal Palace. But before we get to that, I want to say a little something about getting around Phnom Penh…
Up next: Traffic in Phnom Penh
After that: The Royal Palace of Cambodia
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