Monday 5 November 2012

Following the tour on Saturday we decided to have a much easier day on Sunday. We were up late and had a late breakfast.
After breakfast we walked across the road to Wat Penh the temple built by the lady Penh to honour Buddha. Crossing the road is itself a major feat. There are no crossings or traffic lights so basically you take your life in your hands as you step off the kerb with gay insouciance and plough you way across the oncoming traffic. Luckily for us the rule appears to be that you do everything you can to avoid running pedestrians down. We are both quite worried though and I notice we tend to hold hands as we launch ourselves into the traffic. So if anything happens it will happen to us together. There are no gIve way signs and no stop signs at junctions so what you get is a complete free for all as traffic tries to force it's way out. Every body understands what they are doing and all concerned seem happy with the situation.
Both of us have said we would not want to drive here.
Then we walked  down to the riverside where we sat with a beer for an hour watching the Mekong river and the world passing by. The bar was next to a salt seller and we watched customers coming and going. One guy put a 50 kg sack between his legs on a moped. In the time we were there 15 50 kg sacks were also loaded into the back of an estate car, which drove off without a care. We were very impressed. There is not the frantic pace of Bangkok here, but there are  a lot of mopeds and Tuk Tuks around which the world revolves. We saw 8 people in a four seater Tuk Tuk , a scaffolding tower, one crammed to the gunnels with plants and several others.
The other passion is to see how many you can get on a 100 cc moped. The most we have seen is four adults. It is very common to see a small child on Dad's lap at the front just behind the handlebars.
After our beer we walked back to our hotel and on the way bought a couple of bottles of beer to drink in our room. The afternoon passed very pleasantly.
In the evening we had a Malyan meal in the hotel which was really good. Although a little more expensive than outside the bar had a happy hour and we didn't have to pay for a 10 dollar Tuk Tuk ride, so all in we had agreat evening.

No comments:

Post a Comment