Cambodia Highway 6

We drove for about 90 minutes today down the main highway 6.  It was awesome, I had no idea what to picture in advance of a major highway.  Google shows a line on a map, which doesn't really tell you the whole story.  Good bike route if you need to get around, although we just commuted on it at the end of the day.  It's a yellow-stripe-divided-normal-sized-what-we'd-call-secondary-highway, like 22 into Bragg.  It's how it's used that differs!

Bikes are most numerous.  Hundreds of kids in uniform getting out of school puts any critical mass rally in its place, there's hordes of them.  They all ride the same adult sized bikes, so how they ride them is pretty creative (and how they keep their white tops of their uniforms clean is beyond me). In my world, kids being educated and transporting themselves by bicycle is a beautiful thing, times two.  There were kilometers of highway occupied 3 kids abreast on the side streaming home in their white shirt blue pant/dress uniforms.

Second most numerous are little motos, 125cc Honda Dream's seem most common. They're quiet. They're multi-use. A Honda Dream (or equivalent) can:
- be driven shirtless while smoking and talking on a cell phone
- carry a driver and 3 monks
- 4 or 5 older school kids
- tripling school kids, with the back kid of the sandwich wrapping his arms all the way to the front kid to hold it all together, and the middle kid of the sandwich having his arms outstreched backward so two kids on bikes (and the kids they are doubling) can be pulled, for a chain of 7 in petrol fueled locomotion
- a family. Toddlers don't go in baby seats, they just hang on tight.
- chickens, 400lb pigs, rebar, cement mixers, an amazing number of bags of rice or stacks of hay, etc.
- pull trailers stacked about 8' high and 10' long stacked with probably over a ton of firewood and 2 or 3 people on the trailer

The list goes on... they're incredibly versatile. You fill them up from roadside stands that have everything anyone needs in life. Gas is sold in 40oz Johnny Walker Red or Johnny Walker Black glass bottles with plastic baggies crammed in the top, I'm guessing they don't denote premium or regular ; ).  I haven't seen gas pumps yet, but they must exist for cars and trucks. As a side note, it's been a few years since I've glued myself to a TV for the Dakar rally, but seeing these 90lb Cambodian women blaze down a dirt road sitting prim and proper with knees together and perfectly straight spines while navigating all the other stuff below that can make its way to a dirt road, plus ruts and mud, leaves the Dakar rally looking weak!

I'll skip to cars and trucks next, even though they aren't next on the frequency histogram. Toyotas are the car of choice, but there aren't many. A few Camry sedans, then a strangely large number of Lexus LX300's and the big 470's. Must have cush jobs.

Cows that look like water buffalo to me, chickens, pigs, dogs, ox drawn carts, tractors (totally different than what you're picturing, guaranteed), construction equipment, old Toyota/Nissan pickups, transport trucks and pedestrians are all over highway 6.  Cows don't care about cars. Dogs seem to. Cats are smart enough to stay in the grass and watch the mayhem. Transport trucks don't have cabs, they're open air like windowless army jeeps and piled mountainoulsy high with whatever, usually rice or hay, with the farmers on top. Construction equipment is like we'd see at home, Komatsu hoes and such.  But they don't have enclosed cabs, and the entire construction crew rides hanging on to any part of the machine on the trailer. Old pickups have over a dozen people on them, maybe 20. I tried to count. I got to a dozen then it got confusing, but I didn't feel done with the headcount at that point.

There aren't really merge lanes or crossings. Motos build up speed in the dirt on the side then go for broke trying to make it from the red earth edge to the tarmac. A flip flop stays on at highway speed and apparently is fine for shifting even with 60km/h headwinds from 3rd to 4th (side note - if you ever thought you needed shoes for different tasks, apparently you're wrong: flip flops are construction ready, hiking ready, bicycling, restauranting, school system ready, and look great while you're taking a break from any of the above and smoking in the rice paddy squat position!).

Suffice to say, there are a lot of different speeds. Not all have signals, and those that do don't use them at all. It's a "beep beep" system of organized mayhem to let people know you're coming. Nobody seems agitated or road raging, they're just out doing their own thing.  Highway 6 connects Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, among others, making it a backbone transportation corridor.  It was a poetic study of locomotion by all practicable means.

Like I said, we drove for about 90 minutes today down the main highway 6, and it was awesome!