Perspectives from a road trip

The ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh yesterday wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be. This is because I was fighting off waves of carsickness the entire time. I usually don't get carsick so this was unusual. I think yesterday's condition was brought on by riding in the back of a late model Nissan that felt like it lost its shocks about 70,000 miles ago over bumpy unpaved roads while constantly accelerating and braking to avoid bicycles, motorbikes, tuk tuks and other vehicular traffic while the driver honked his horn at least every 5 minutes. Not that this had any discernible effect on the traffic pattern, not that this deterred him from laying on the horn every single time he passed somebody or something. Did I mention this ride lasted 5 hours?

Usually I pass the time in a car reading, but since I couldn't look at words on a page for more than 10 seconds without feeling like I was going to lose my breakfast, I looked out the window instead. And promptly felt bad for feeling sorry for myself, because this is what I saw:

These pictures do little to show the scale of abject poverty and grueling manual labor I witnessed on the roadside for the entire 5 hour drive. These are ramshackle houses with ladders for access, with no electricity. I saw people sitting in the shade underneath their homes, I saw little kids chasing each other around the homes, I saw naked children standing outside and I saw men and women doing farmwork using equipment and methods from at least 100 years ago. (I'm not sure farmwork is the right way to describe wading through knee high water with water buffaloes, but it does capture hauling high piles of hay on carts, using scythes to cut some crop I couldn't identify, and putting hay into another machine I couldn't identify and waiting for it to shoot out the other end.) I also saw a lot of kids dressed in uniforms riding their bikes, presumably to school. I saw one such class in session. It was an open air building and it looked like they had very little in the way of classroom supplies. It was swelteringly hot outside and I can only imagine how hot it was in that classroom.

There were other, more captivating scenes than the ones above but I couldn't get good pictures because we were driving by them too fast. The only reason I got the pictures above is because we stopped the car, right in the middle of the highway, to help our driver's "brother" who also stopped his car in the middle of the highway because he had some car trouble. SMH.

There were also lots of nice looking cows:

Unfortunately that is the best picture I could get.

I have seen few animals with the elegance and grace of water buffaloes. I realize as I say that that it sounds odd, especially coming from me, but trust me, they're beautiful and move with such fluidity and ease. I wish I had a picture of them but I don't have a good one.

Instead, I will share with you my view this morning of my lovely breakfast and the beautiful garden right outside my hotel's cafe.