Curious facts

A curious fact about Cambodia is that, at least based on my observations, virtually all the cars in the country are Toyota Camrys. There are loads of non-car vehicles, of course -- land cruisery things, big Lexus SUVs, vans, pickups, tuk-tuks, vast numbers of motorbikes and bicycles -- but apart from a couple of Toyota Corollas, a couple of Diahatsus and a Mercedes, all the cars we saw were Camrys. Old and new and different colours, some left hand drive and some right hand drive.

The tuk-tuks in Cambodia, unlike the autorickshaw-like three-wheelers of Thailand, are motocycles pulling little trailers. The trailers have seating for four but the motorbikes, ranging in size from 90 to 125 cc's, don't really have the power to pull four big Canadians, or even two big and two little Canadians. For the most part we took taxis when we had to get any distance, such as to the temples of Angkor, but a couple of times we took tuk-tuks short distances. In Sihanoukville I feared we would run afoul of any society for the prevention of cruelty to tuk-tuks that existed. We were on our way to a restaurant that turned out to be farther away than anticipated and up (and down) some very big hills. The motorbike seemed to be on its last legs at several points, crawling uphill at a walking pace. Going downhill was even more alarming, with the heavily-laden trailer threatening to seize control of the whole operation and try to get past the motorbike. Judging by the number of roadside stands selling motorcycle shock absorbers and the stacks of brightly wrapped wheel rims at all the repair stands, motorcyles in Cambodia live a hard life. Large tourists aren't the only culprit. I saw one little bike carrying the rider and five 50 kg sacks of rice.

A curious fact about New Zealand is that the entire country seems to be devoted to hurling people off buildings, bridges, cliffs and other natural features or dropping then out of aeroplanes or down into deep holes in the earth. It's unclear whether the New Zealanders themselves fling themselves from great heights or whether they have just discovered that tourists will pay big money to be flung.