Yesterday some of my students were telling me with a straight face that in Cambodia you can get fined by the police for riding a motorcycle with more than one passenger, and I had to stop myself from laughing. Really? On my commute this morning I decided to do an informal census of how many motorcyclists had two or more passengers and counted 32. How many were being ticketed by the police? Yea, right. I'm sure you can get ticketed for it, but it would be like getting jury duty--a variety of occasional bad luck that cannot be predicted, but at least there's some way to get out of it (in Cambodia, a small on the spot donation to the cop to reward his vigilance).Of course human passengers are the most mundane sort of cargo to ferry by motorcycle in Phnom Penh. Here are some of my favorites in no particular order of ranking:
1) two 15' lengths of rebar
2) a dozen live ducks
3) two squealing pigs
4) an industrial-sized pot of hot soup
5) a large pane of window glass.
The three stooges would love it here.
The picture for this post is not my own, just the first thing that came up in a google search for "Cambodia motorcycle whole family." It's fairly accurate except that normally the father ONLY would be wearing a helmet.
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