Chasing Cars, Cambodian style, February 2011

• Deaths on Cambodian roads only make the news if there are many. Phnom Penh Post (20 Feb.) reports 5 dead after a truck with musicians (!) collides with a tuk-tuk with gasoline.

• Cambodia's traffic makes international headlines. An article in the Guardian (15 Feb.) echoes the underlying flow of this blog:

  'Everything you want to know about Cambodia's city society is found in the traffic of Phnom Penh – social conformity mixed with anarchic individualism, the confidence of young Cambodian women, the indifference of the police, the motorbike as an extra limb attached to the body, the inability of old cultural ways to cope with the modern world.
  
  If I were a Cambodian policeman, I too would just stand and watch'.

  
  

• How weird can it get? A former official (who should be have been in jail at the time) manages to create an accident in Ratanakiri province. Solution? Pay a pittance for disabling lifes (PPP, 27 Jan.).

• Lot's of flight information so much so that the Cambodia Mirror (21 Jan.) has a special on Cambodian Airlines (note that most do not operate anymore ....).
  Other airworthy news: Cambodian Angkor Air will start breaking Bangkok Air's monopoly (though there must be considerable profits falling to Cambodia) between Siem Reap and Bangkok (PPP, 4 Feb.). CAA will actually start to fly more flights out of Siem Reap. The article in the Phnom Penh Post (30 Jan.) includes the insinuation that Bangkok Air are making huge amounts of cash on this flight. A response, points out that per km Siem Reap - Phnom Penh (serviced only be CAA) is actually more expensive, while CC believes that Phnom Penh - Saigon is even more expensive (only operator is CAA's major share holder Vietnam Airlines).
  In response the Thai are emboldend to demand their share of the spills (PPP, 11 Feb).
  Tonle Sap Airways takes off (PPP, 7 Feb.) as will Indochina Airline.

• Despite all the war like situation with the Thai, Cambodia's PM can go out of his way to lean on a freight company for

  'claiming its trucks often caused collisions on Cambodia’s roads and bridges'. (PPP, 24 Jan.).

  Mystified? Soi seems the company in question:

  'So Nguon Group chairman So Nguon said yesterday that the company had been upgrading its vehicles in recent months, adding “I don’t know who instigated Samdech [Hun Sen] to be angry with us like this.” The firm, thought to be the biggest trucking firm in the Kingdom, had bought 60 new trucks to be used for frieght transportation in recent months, he claimed, and said it had sold most of its older vehicles'.

• Tourists though take aim at busses. Tripadvisor's forum includes a warning concerning Paramount:

  'We had a lot of material damage and medical costs but even after dozens of mails (and visits to their office) they don't respond. Even their insurance company, (Caminco Insurance) stopped responding. Almost 6 months later they are still not taking their responsibility!'

• Take a boat instead. PPP (7 Feb.) has an article on Compagnie Fluviale du Mekong company. It's not cheap:

  'a typical 10-day cruise can cost about US$4,000 for a double cabin'.

Chasing Cars, December 2, 2010

It's inevitable to mention last weeks tragic bridge affair. Though traffic deaths and carnage are an increasingly familiar part of modern day life in Cambodia, it's mindboggling that a simple bridge and in-numerous amounts of people can lead to more than 350 dead.
What could be have been a watershed for the country seems to have been put behind us all. No one is accounted for blame, no one to share responsibility. And certainly not the owners of the bridge. And certainly not the government. Responsible behavior is not Khmer and hoping to improve the future by learning from past mistakes seems a tactic foreign to the local culture.

• One of Phnom Pen's more peculiar traffic exhibits (and tourist attractions), Sambo the elephant, is destined to be evicted from the city. From Cambodiacalling: 'Sambo's owner Sinsorn was told on the 11 November that Sambo must leave Wat Phnom and never return because people complain Sambo disrupts traffic'. Sambo disrupts a fraction on the traffic, I bet the PP's govenor disrupts the traffic a lot more than Sambo!

• More past haunting Cambodia. The Phnom Penh Post reports that 14 persons were killed when a tractor ran over an anti-tank mine.

• Despite all the romanticism concerning the soon to disappear rail norries, accidents can also be deadly. Again the Phnom Penh Post:

  'Thnoat Chhrum commune police official Hong Savon said that a mix of heat and long-term use caused one of the norrie’s wheels to break. One of the passengers, Kong Tit from Kandieng district, was thrown from the norrie and fell in front of the cart. He suffered a fractured skull, a severe leg injury and several injuries to his arms. He died due to blood loss on the way to hospital'.

• Expat Advisory service has a couple of traffic related threads. Letter to the Mad Bitch Driving a Prado.

  'Yes, you know who you are'.

  A traffic related anger management issue? Strange why the letter hasn't been sent by mail. Then Bus Driver is Nuts. It elicits quite a few reactions, though it seems that most drivers are nuts.

• Over on the Khmer 440 forum, there's no less than 4 pages on hit and runs. How common are they? A.:

  'Though disturbing ... it is standard practice in Cambodia'.

  Hot off their website. The police are using their speed gun on a less busy stretch of road beyond the airport. And manned by 20 cops no less.