Driving in Phnom Penh

Within the first minutes of arriving in Phnom Penh one is struck dumb by the driving habits. There are the outward signs of a traffic law-abiding society: traffic lights (that helpfully count down the time until they change); signage with the dos and don'ts (one way street, no left turn, etc.). But this is all completely superseded by the basic two rules of Cambodia driving: 1) you can do anything you want as long as you do it slowly; and, 2) it is very bad form to have to completely stop.

Up to a certain level of traffic flow this actually works fairly well. To give one example, if you are driving down a busy street and you want to turn left under the quaint notion of traffic law, you need to go up to the point where the 2 streets intersect, stop, and wait for a sufficient break in the oncoming traffic to make the left turn. The way Cambodians see it, if there is a break in the traffic (more on their definition of a break later) anytime you are within a few hundred yards of where you want to turn left it makes much more sense to cross over there, from where you slowly drive against traffic, pinned up against the left curb of the street (that would be the wrong curb for those of you having trouble picturing this move) until you arrive at the street where you wanted to go left, at which point you turn left.

The most amazing part of this is that it will engender absolutely no negative reactions from anybody, including any policeman whom happens to be standing by eying traffic to see who he can cite (pronounced "bribe") for a helmet violation. No horns honking, no raised middle fingers, no looks of exasperation, nothing, just traffic as usual.

Thinking this logic through you can see the favored way of turning left on to a boulevard if you come up on to it from a smaller side street. No stopping to wait for a break in traffic, which would break the cardinal rule of Cambodia driving (no stopping). Instead, you immediately turn left going into oncoming traffic, and drive slowly until the opportunity comes to tack over to the proper side of the road. This has a sort of elegance when you are driving a motorbike, as you don't disturb the oncoming traffic that much and it only has to adjust slightly to flow around you. But people in Land Cruisers do this. Imagine that you were driving down Rockville Pike (or El Camino, of whatever serves as a busy 4 lane street in your neck of the woods), in the slow lane, minding your own business, and then, magically, coming out of a small side street, a full-size 4x4 was all of a sudden driving right at you (albeit slowly). Remember, you are not allowed to honk your horn.

Up to a certain point of traffic density this has a certain Buddhist balletic quality to it. Go with the flow, adjust to the flow, and make a new flow. It reminds me of nothing more than watching water currents go around boulders and fallen logs. You see someone a head of you wants to do something, and you adjust to allow him to do it. Pedestrian street crossings take particular faith in this ability to adjust, as you are essentially putting your life in the faith that the oncoming Lexus 470 will slow down, move over the center line to go around you, and not run you down.

But this balletic quality can, and frequently does, come to a complete stop, when too many car and motos try to share the same piece of road. Since the first thing that anybody does when there way is blocked is to drive around it, even if that takes you across the center line, and the second thing that happens is that all the space behind you will fill up with people doing the same thing, it is easy to see what happens when everybody acts like this and there is literally no room to move. Everything stops, completely and absolutely. Face to face, usually on a diagonal tangent across the road (you'll have to sketch this to see how it works, it is like a problem in thermodynamics). Motos get through for a little while, like water leaking at a faucet, but eventually even they get boxed in, and then everybody moves into disengagement mode, which translates essentially to every small vehicle doing whatever it can to get out (driving up walkways, sidewalks, etc.) and every car trying to turn around is a series of microscopic movement 3 point turns which take a good 10 minutes to execute.

And eventually traffic moves again, for a little while.

On the Vespa I try and stay on the side streets, you have to be more careful at every intersection, but there are fewer blockages.