I wasn’t sure I’d ever see crazier traffic than what we saw in Bangkok. And then we arrived in Cambodia. While Bangkok surely is much bigger, it now occurred to me that it was an organized chaos as drivers for the most part seemed to obey traffic signals. Cambodia, on the other hand, seems devoid of any traffic signals, stop signs, anything. So you come to a 4-way intersection and everyone goes at once from any direction. I’m not just talking cars here… This also includes tour buses, tuk tuks, scooters and people-pushed street vendor carts. Further complicating things, is the lanes of traffic but from what we can tell, they are adhered to by only about 75% of drivers. The other 25% (primarily scooter drivers but there’s an occasional car) drive towards you, in the opposite direction of traffic flow, making things real exciting. But somehow it all works. We saw no accidents. We never felt unsafe as our tuk tuk drivers, Saru in Siem Reap and Mr Vann in Phnom Penh, were solid drivers. People use the hell out of their horns and it seems there’s an unspoken rule that size rules in descending order so buses dictate and scooters adjust. We agreed this would never work in America, recalling the confusion that ensues after a storm knocks out power at a big intersection and all the Trump-voting morons struggle to coordinate an efficient timed response in which all cars on opposite sides go at once. We tried to capture this awesome and utter chaos on video but largely failed as we were too caught up in the experience. There’s a couple video links below that don’t come close to doing it justice.
https://youtu.be/jnBddBv0Kjc
https://youtu.be/8ItKNznswo4