TRAVERSE 175
TRAVEL- CAMBODIA
MEGAN GOVERNI
A RIDE TO REALITY
The first morning I rolled out with Cambodia Motorbike Tours, Phnom Penh was already awake and arguing with itself. Our small fleet of red and white Honda CRF250Ls idled in a loose line outside the hotel, exhausts ticking in the humid dawn. Compared to the city’ s swarm of step-through scooters and battered 125s, the CRFs looked almost regal— tall suspension, knobby tyres, purposeful stance. They were machines built to leave, and that was exactly the plan.
Our guide, Paeng, moved between the bikes with the calm efficiency of someone who has seen every possible roadside disaster and survived it. He tugged at straps, checked chains, thumped tyres with the flat of his palm.
“ Phnom Penh traffic,” he said with a grin,“ is the hardest part. After that, easy.”
We filtered into the current of scooters and SUVs like a school of slightly overconfident fish. Around us, the capital’ s clash of status played out in surround sound. A Lexus LX edged past a fruit seller pushing her cart. A young man in designer sunglasses revved a Sportsbike at the lights while, beside him, a family of four balanced on a single Honda Dream, the youngest child asleep against her mother’ s back.
From the saddle of the CRF, I felt both conspicuous and insulated, higher than most of the traffic, able to see over roofs and into lives. We passed the riverside glitter of Sisowath Quay and then cut inland, where the streets narrowed and the gloss peeled away. Karaoke bars blinked off their night shift. Men hosed last evening’ s secrets into the gutter. A boy no older than ten threaded between cars selling lotus flowers, his reflection briefly flashing in the polished flank of a black Range Rover.
Riding in formation forced a
TRAVERSE 175