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kind of discipline. Hand signals replaced horns. We moved as a unit, accelerating together, braking together, carving through roundabouts with surprising grace. The Honda’ s felt made for this, light enough to dodge potholes, tall enough to command respect, strong enough to leap ahead when gaps appeared. When we finally crossed the Mekong by ferry out of the city, it felt like slipping free of a gravitational field.
The road opened, and so did the country.
Highway gave way to broken tarmac, and broken tarmac to red dirt. The bikes came alive there, their suspension swallowing corrugations that would have shaken a smaller bike to pieces. Dust plumed behind us, hanging in the morning light like incense.
Our first long stop was in a village where thin columns of smoke rose steadily into the sky. Paeng killed his engine and the sudden quiet rang in my ears. We followed the smell to a clearing where families were tending charcoal kilns, low earthen mounds that smouldered with patient determination.
Women with ash-streaked faces explained how the wood was stacked, covered, and burned slowly for days. The profit, they told us, was small. Middlemen bought the sacks cheaply and hauled them to cities like Phnom Penh, where restaurants and households paid many times more for the same blackened chunks.
I looked down at my riding boots, at the imported plastics and polished aluminium of the CRF, and felt the awkward weight of contrast. We had spent more on this week of riding than a charcoal burner might see in months. And yet these workers laughed easily, teasing one another, curious about the bikes. One swung a leg over mine at Paeng’ s encouragement, grinning as he blipped the throttle. For a moment,
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