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Poipet These photos are from the bus trip between Bangkok, Thailand, and Siem Reap, Cambodia. This was a fourteen-hour bus ride: three hours to cover 250 kilometers (about 100 miles) on the Thai side, two hours to pass Cambodian immigration, and NINE hours to cover 75 miles on the Cambodian side! This is because Cambodian roads are phenomenally bad--paving is strictly optional. |
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Poipet, the border town between Thailand and Cambodia. This is a pretty rough town: within 5 minutes of our entry to Cambodia, a sneak thief struck our group. Fortunately, he didn't get anything. |
Poipet is largely unmechanized. Here, a giant cart is being hauled by a team of five men (!). | A Cambodian gas station. Gas is stored in a variety of containers, from the big plastic containers shown here, to soda and water bottles (!) | Me with our minivan, at the gas station. |
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| Believe it or not, this is a *good* Cambodian road. Bumpy as hell, but at least you're not going to break an axle. | This is also a good Cambodian road, nice flat dirt, good view over the ricefields. | This is a not so good Cambodian road...(and bear in mind, this is a major highway!) | ...and this is a bad one. Note the giant potholes, big enough to sink an elephant in. |
| I didn't get a photo of the worst road, but let's just say it was an asphalt version of a bad dirt road, complete with washboarding and giant potholes. Curiously enough the entire mess was still covered evenly asphalt, suggesting that this travesty was *intentional* ! |  |
And here (left) is a completely gratuitous statue of some god/demon killing a bull. Cambodia is full of sights like these; I never did find out what this one meant. (Right: oxcarts and cars share the road in Cambodia!) |
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| Around Town | |||
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| A high-tech Cambodian gas station. The operator turns a crank to pump gas up into the little container (thus measuring it), then lets it drain into the tank. | A water buffalo. I think they're kinda cute. | Man with oxcart. | Cambodia's land-mine heritage shows here: this trishaw is an amputee wheelchair welded onto a bicycle (!). |
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On the River These photos are from an express boat between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, the capital. (One bus ride in Cambodia was enough!) |
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| A shack by the water. In Thailand, corrugated tin shacks are a sign of poverty; in Cambodia, only the wealthy can afford them. |
Hey, it may be a shack, but dammit, the reception is great! |
A poor person's houseboat. Note the firewood on the roof! | A rich person's houseboat, complete with corrugated tin and painted roof (!) |
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| A market woman, paddling from boat to boat to sell her wares. | Another little shack by the water. These are built from palm fronds and thin bits of bamboo lath. Most look like they might fall down at any moment. | No, these people are not protestors. They are hotel touts, pressed five deep against the gate, preparing to mob arriving travelers. In the foreground, a pair of hapless travelers prepares to run the gauntlet. | Man transporting coconuts by bicycle (one bunch on each side). Just think of the applications for AIDS Lifecycle 2! |
