Scoot along the Mekong
George Driver spends five days riding a scooter along the banks of the Mekong River through Cambodia’s little-visited rural interior.
We stare at each other, heads turned in mutual curiosity. A group of children, riding bikes so oversized they can barely touch the pedals, sing a giggling chorus of ‘‘hello’’ as we pass. A pony sporting a bristling manicured mane trots along, towing a man on a wooden cart, whip held lazily aloft in his hand. He grins widely, nods low. A woman dressed in black pyjamas walks, balancing a sheaf of hay on her head, returning to her humped cattle, which sit tethered beneath her wooden shack.
We slow down, cruise, soak it in. Travelling a dirt road on a scooter, lost on the banks of the Mekong River.
The Mekong literally defines mainland Southeast Asia. Flowing over 4000km from the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau, the river forms the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, before flowing through Cambodia and fanning out in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam.
It’s one of the few rivers, like the Nile or Amazon, whose very name seems to have a power of its own. It had become an intermittent companion on my travels through the region, and its meandering heft always gave me a feeling of awe.
When I discovered a series of quiet rural roads followed the river’s banks north from Phnom Penh, it seemed the perfect opportunity to get to know it better. And what better way to explore this icon than on the region’s quintessential mode of transport – a 125cc scooter.
After hiring scooters for $12 a day, my girlfriend and I boarded a ferry out of Phnom Penh. The capital lies at the junction where the brown water of the Tonle Sap river and the green Mekong mix.
The Tonle Sap is the only major river in the world that reverses its course annually, alternately draining the great Tonle Sap lake – the largest in Southeast Asia – in the dry season, and refilling the lake when the Mekong swells in the wet season. In 10 minutes, we were transported from the chaotic city streets on the Tonle to a quiet fishing village on the Mekong.
We were soon on our scooters, cruising along a quiet road lined with mango trees and coconut palms growing outside crude roadside workshops and street stalls.
As we travelled further from Phnom Penh, the setting evolved into scenes of rural Khmer living. We witnessed haystacks and humped zebu cattle, rough wooden houses teetering on stilts, with children swinging on hammocks below. There was the occasional glimpse of verdant plains of maize and rice growing alongside the meandering Mekong.
Every kilometre seemed to transport us back another decade – scooters became bicycles, trucks became wooden carts, and the sealed road turned to dirt. The people changed too, donning loosely tied checkered scarves on their heads, which dangled down over weathered faces. And we went from passive observers to conspicuous travellers.
Everywhere, heads turned as we crawled along, faces lit with warmth and curiosity. Few tourists came by these parts, it seemed. Moments like these are why I travel, I thought.
But when the dirt road became an overgrown sandy track snaking between rice paddies, I was forced to admit we were completely lost. I was surprised we had made it this far – the roads on the map were often more theoretical than a reality.
Fortunately, after backtracking for half-anhour, we found a car ferry that took us to the opposite riverbank, for 25 cents. We were soon back on a good road entering Kampong Cham, a provincial capital of 40,000 people.
We spent the night in a block of bungalows raised above a wetland on the edge of town, for $12 a night, breakfast included. The floor was scattered with mouse droppings, and the solid mattress was still wrapped in plastic beneath the thin synthetic sheets. As my head hit the pillow, the karaoke began next door. The plastic wrapping on the mattress crinkled loudly as I tossed and turned.
The Khmer people are generally very shy and polite, so their predilection for karaoke always seemed incongruous to me. It’s such a popular pastime, it is like a national soundtrack. Across the country, we found Cambodians gathered around television sets at all hours of the day, enormous
speakers distorting under the volume as they sang along to music that sounded like the preset backing track on an old Casio keyboard.
In the morning, we went to a 12th-century temple a few kilometres away, which was like a miniature version of Angkor Wat: ornate friezes and statues carved from sandstone, stained black by the tropical climate. The place was deserted and fascinating to explore, a welcome contrast to the crowded Angkor Wat 250km away.
Back on the road the towns started to alternate between Buddhist and Muslim. The region has one of the largest Cham communities in the country – a predominantly Sunni-Muslim ethnic group of about 220,000. The large Mughal-style mosques popped up every few kilometres, with bulbous domes, and minaret towers behind gateways headed with Arabic script. The women wore white hijabs, some full black burkas, while the men wore knee-length shirts with fezzes and wispy beards hanging from their faces. An entirely unexpected sight among the rice paddies and palm trees.
But after three hours, the monotony of driving was setting in. Travelling by scooter is a very solitary form of travel – no conversation, or even music to break up the journey. I was alone with my thoughts, which were becoming increasingly concentrated on the pain in my bottom from straddling the scooter all day. The freedom of two wheels rapidly becoming a burden, I started dreaming of sitting on a bus, salty snacks by my side and a podcast in my ears, watching the world go by.
We reached Kratie in the late afternoon, a town on the riverbank with a few French colonial buildings and a small tourism industry based around the endangered freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins that live upstream. We found a room for $18 a night in a hotel overlooking the Mekong. We were soon recovering with 75 cent beers, watching the sun set behind the river – always an incredible sight in this flat, hazy landscape. The riverside promenade awakened in the twilight, with couples strolling after work and about 50 people gathered for an al fresco aerobics class.
In the morning, we boarded a small wooden boat to Koh Trong, one of a number of inhabited islands in this stretch of the Mekong. We spent a couple of hours on rickety bicycles riding along a 9km loop track that encircled the island, passing groves of pomelo (a kind of rugby ball-sized grapefruit), and giving high-fives to the children who would rush forth as we approached.
In the afternoon, we rode our scooters 15km upstream to Kampi, where the lazy river comes to life, frothing over slabs of rock and bending around numerous small islands.
We found a space on the riverbank, hoping to see a pod of Irrawaddy dolphins. We didn’t see any, but happily sat watching the red sun dissolve into the horizon like a Monet painting.
The next night, after retracing our route towards Phnom Penh, we spent the night at a homestay a few kilometres out of Kampong Cham.
The family lived a spartan existence, no furniture to augment the bare wooden hut, other than a hammock and a mattress on the floor.
Despite not having a language in common we spent some time pointing, nodding and laughing with our elderly host. We retired to our mattress, rural smells, wafting up through loosely fitting floorboards, emanating from two cows tethered on the ground beneath us. As my head hit the pillow, the screech of karaoke shattered the evening.
Another night truly immersed in Khmer culture on the banks of the Mekong.