Phnom Penh may be one of the largest cities in the world with no public mass transit. It's the biggest city I've ever visited where you can't find even a single city bus. Gettng an accurate census in a sprawling, ramshackle place like this isn't easy. Most current estimates put the population here at somewhere just over two million. The population of buses, trains or any other form of surface mass transport is ZERO.
Phnom Penh experimented briefly with buses three or four years ago. The experiment lasted only three months because, I've been told, no one would ride them. The denizens of this city have a more unique form of transport that they seem highly unlikely to stop using - the motodup (augmented by the larger and much more romantic tuk tuk - see second vehicle in the photo below). A motodup is simply a 100-125 cc motorbike (often a version of the Honda cub made by Daelim from Korea) and driver that will put you on the back of his bike and drive you around town for a small fee. The cost varies depending on the distance. As foreigeners, we ALWAYS had to negotiate but we invariably settled near the usual cost of about fifty cents per kilometer.
Many guidebooks tell you that the street corners are full of waiting motodup drivers easily recognizable by their ubiquitous uniform - the baseball cap. It's almost impossible to walk past them without hearing the song of the streets, "Hello Sir, moto?" or the more simplified "Moto?".
Cambodians famously do NOT like to walk. That, supposedly, is the main reason why the bus experiment failed. Motodups will take you from door to door. With a bus, you have to get off at some predetermined stop and walk to your final destination. Motodups are cheap. You can find one any time of day or night. They're very convenient. It's no wonder we see thousands of these guys (NEVER have we seen a woman driver) around the city. Women riders go sidesaddle.
When we started work, we needed to get from our house to our office. We toyed with the idea of buying bicycles but never got around to it. Instead we hit up the motodups on the corner closest to our house. Both of us can pile onto single moto and get to the office in less than ten minutes. Since our Khmer was limited, we drew a simple map of our destination. With a little deciphering, the driver seemed to understand and off we went.
After only two or three days, a strange thing happened. One of our drivers picked us up for the second time - a repeat. When we tried to fumble through the map description and directions, he smiled and waved us off. He remembered where we were going. It was amazing. Get on the bike; no need to give directions; no need to negotiate the fee; just roll and enjoy the scenery. It was like that every day going forward unless we had a driver who'd never carried us before.
I won't go into the hair raising aspect of trusting your life to another driver in some of THE MOST chaotic traffic on earth. Suffice to say that, if you're paying attention at all, it can be very scary. The rules of the road here are minimal and traffic flows based on lack of resistance more than any other factor. It completely common to drive down the wrong side of the street agains traffic as long as you stay closer to the shoulder. Red stoplights merely mean "slow down". Intersections ebb and flow with the cross traffic pushing and nudging until someone can break all the way across. Of course, all of this happens without helmets for the passengers.
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