Cambodia Walkman
The first time I was out walking late at night in Phnom Penh, more than four years ago, I was with friends on Street 19 up around Street 108. Oooh, creepy, was the general response. There certainly has never been a dearth of anecdotal accounts of the dangers inherent in our streets.
On my first visit here, in 1994, people told of hearing frequent gunshots at night just a year previously and robberies that were so commonplace that nocturnal wanderers were almost certain to pay for their eccentricity. This all made me quite hesitant to challenge the gods, as it were, in spite of my mania for walking.
However, not long afterward I met a fellow who walked the nighttime streets far more than I ever will. He’d walk everywhere at all hours of the night. It took four years before he got robbed. He continued to walk after that but was more cautious about where. Meanwhile he inspired me to follow in his footsteps, so to speak.
I’ve been lucky. I’m out hoofin’ it four or five nights a week, anytime between 11 PM and 3 AM, and have had no problems in the four years I’ve been doing it. I generally stay on certain well-lit routes and within the central district – between the Palace and Wat Phnom and as far east as Street 51 – and so far have barely had a fright or two; totally unwarranted… knock on wood.
There are several reasons behind my love of perambulating – walking around for pleasure – though in this case it isn’t strictly pleasure since it?s also my principle mode of transport.
Even when I’m back in the states and have a car to drive, I’ll still walk far more than most people. Part of my attitude comes from an experience that goes back to living in Los Angeles in the late fifties. I would fire up my Olds 98 – the equivalent of today’s big SUVs – to go down to the corner store even though it was only about a hundred meters away. Since the full absurdity of that hit me nearly a half century ago I’ve not been able to drive short distances.
Anyway, it’s my major source of exercise, only supplemented somewhat by sex and dancing. I?m semi-retired and on a very minimal work schedule, so the extra time involved in walking isn’t a significant deterrent. Moreover, it’s a challenge I make for myself. Some people climb mountains, bungee jump off of high bridges, run marathons, explore Antarctica, I walk.
Another major impetus behind my manic pedestrianism is a corresponding deep-seated dislike of motorbikes. I had a couple of scooters as a youth, and had fun toodling around but also recognized quite clearly that I was doing amazingly stupid and dangerous maneuvers on them. That’s added to the fact that in America drivers will make left turns right in front of a motorbike because they don’t hardly see you or recognize you as driving a real vehicle. I took my share of spills as a result.
The total insanity of Phnom Penh’s traffic is another powerful deterrent to my riding on them. It’s not like I never ride. There are occasions when I have to if I want to go places with friends. Nearly every time though I’m further reminded why it’s not for me. The most difficult part is the mere centimeters between vehicles while they weave in and out without even looking at who might be next to them or in back of them. This is closely followed by the cowboys who race through heavy traffic. I know people who’ve been hit while standing still waiting for a light to change. I’m out a lot and even though I make a point in the daytime of using alleys and streets with minimal traffic, I still see accidents or the immediate aftermath on a frequent basis. I’m in pretty good shape for my age, but still, broken bones would be a tremendous hassle.
I also don’t like the haggling over fares that’s sometimes necessary with motodops or the outrageous demands they will occasionally make if you don’t set the price beforehand. When they ask too much, I just walk, even if it’s at the peak of a sweltering day or at 3AM.
If I’ve got too much to carry, I?ll take a cyclo. I’ll also ride a tuk-tuk if it’s too far for a cyclo to go. Still, if I start to get lazy and ride on a regular basis, I’ll lose my quirkiness and eccentricity, not to mention, exercise. Sometimes I get it in my head to walk even if it’s several kilometers, like the time I walked home at midnight from the old Peace Cafe, which was on Street 63, near Mao Tse Tung Blvd., all the way to Psar Chas. I’ve also walked late at night from Maxine’s across the river, over the Japanese Bridge to my apartment near the National Museum. Still, generally speaking, I have to plan ahead if it involves more than a couple of kilometers; I don’t just up and go.
There’s also the money saved; since I’m out and about three times nearly every day, that could amount to 40 or 50 bucks a month. Not a momentous amount of money, but everything counts.
Of course, there is a great nuisance involved in walking, since ‘Moto, suh‘ can get quite old very quickly. Sometimes I just ignore them, though if they manage to capture my attention in spite of my best efforts to pretend they don’t exist, I stare at them with an evil eye as they degenerate into befuddlement.
Some can be very persistent, thinking I must be half deaf and haven’t heard them the first time. One night, in the wee hours, I was walking on Norodom about as far from the roadway as possible. It has very wide sidewalks so all but the densest of motodops would have to know I had no interest in their services. In spite of all that a young motodop spotted me and started his entreaties. After the fourth ‘Moto’, I threw up my arms and yelled, ‘Moto, moto, moto, moto’. He drove off calling me a fucking idiot.
There’s a motodop who stations himself at a corner near my house. He’s got a big smile, probably a really nice guy. I’ve passed by that corner now at least a couple of times a day for a year and a half, never once using his services – in fact, as rarely as I ride a motorbike in the daytime, he’s probably never even seen me on one – and he still can’t get it through his thick skull that his, ‘My friend, moto’ is a totally futile effort. I’ve even told him in my halting Khmer, ‘Sorry, no like moto, like walk. I say before, no like moto. You know I no like moto.’ All to no avail.
Lately, I?ve taken to mocking them. It’s fortunate that they’re very good natured and I’m too old for a young guy to feel good about beating up. If I’m walking where many don’t know me, but it’s totally obvious what they are doing; hanging around at the curb sitting on their motorbikes, I respond to their ‘Moto, suh?’ with, ‘Oh, you have a moto, good for you, lucky man.’ If they say, ‘Moto, ok?’, I say, ‘OKAY’, and continue walking. Sometimes they take it well, sometimes not, but so far I’ve not had to pay for my cheekiness.
Finally, there’s no way to talk about walking without mentioning sidewalks once again. Phnom Penh’s governor recently announced that the city was going to narrow all of the city’s sidewalks to make way for more vehicles. I quickly fired off a response to the Daily. Nobody walks, he said, we like motorbikes and cars. On the contrary, I retorted, lots of people walk and more would if it were safe and pleasant. One has only to witness the throngs of walkers on Sisowath on a pleasant weekend evening to see how wrong he is. Anyway, is every primary school kid going to jump into his or her Tico to drive to school? More accurately, he could have said that none of his friends walk.
Besides, he went on, the sidewalks are anarchy, blocked with parked cars, restaurants, etc. At this point their being blocked is only part of the problem. A little background is in order. The practice of property owners usurping public sidewalks for private uses only came into being with the Vietnamese occupation. Before then nothing was allowed on them. As an adjunct of the country’s troubles, all rules of construction, relative to sidewalks at least, were suspended. I don’t mean to imply in any of this that sidewalks should only be for pedestrians; there?s plenty of room for them to serve multi-purposes as long as minimal passage is maintained for walkers and they are designed primarily for that purpose.
Previously, curbs were square, sidewalks were flat and all were on the same level. You can still see that in some of the older parts of town. Now property owners think of sidewalks primarily as ramps to get their vehicles onto their sidewalks or into their houses, rather than places for people to walk. As a result, some are very slanted, making them difficult to walk on. Furthermore, each property owner now designs his or her own, so they are frequently at different levels; it’s like going up and down stairs, not what a sidewalk is supposed to be.
This is compounded by the prevailing design of driveways. They are built as curb cuts, as if each were a new street. This is obviously a result of not having the needs of walkers in mind. Driveways don’t need to be designed for the ease of vehicles. It requires no extra effort for a motor vehicle to rise up a slight incline – so that the sidewalk can remain level ? whereas steps are a decided chore for pedestrians. Eventually, the government will also have to consider the needs of the handicapped; today’s sidewalks would be impossible for them even if they were cleared for walking. Think of it as the ‘stroller rule’; that is, if it isn’t convenient to push a stroller on it isn’t properly designed.
Another thing that ties my knickers into knots is motorbike drivers who use the sidewalks to avoid traffic tie-ups, expecting me to give up my space on the sidewalk for their convenience. I stand my ground and make them go around me. That is part of the general lack of respect for pedestrians – you know, how they cut right in front of you, in the rudest manner, stopping you in your tracks. I know it’s just their culture and they don’t think of it as rude. However, I help show them I’m not buying it by sticking my arm out in front of me, forcing them to stop or go around back.
Finally, the city’s tree trimming crews have been emasculating the trees lately on Street 178. They aren?t killing them, but they’re being trimmed so far back they?re likely to require years to recover sufficiently to provide the shade that’s now been lost. Seems idiotic to me, a fervent tree hugger, but they may have their nutcase reasons. Anyway, if they’ve got nothing better to do they could use their saws to trim back sidewalk trees that have low lying branches that now require walkers to duck. That would actually make sense.
To sum up, it’s almost beyond irony that a fanatic walker would choose such a pedestrian-challenged place to make his home. But that?s life.
Stan Kahn
