7-22-09 8:00 PM

Hello and Welcome to the second installment of my blog! I really appreciate the comments and e-mails I've been getting from people because they’re very encouraging, so thank you. Also, I’m actually posting this the day after all the stuff I talk about happened, because I was pretty tired last night.

Today was quite a big day, and I took more pictures to try and demonstrate what I did, as per my father’s recommendation. Thanks for the good journalistic advice dad. Unfortunately my pictures tend to be of dark hallways or motorcycles, which I didn't think about until I was back in my hotel. So next time I'm preparing for a blog entry I'll try and take some pictures of a larger scope.

To begin though, this picture sort of shows the scene. I took it for the Kawasaki Ninja, which I thought was a pretty crazy bike to have here. There are actually a fair number of serious machines here though. For example, I have seen a Ducati and other liter class (1000cc) sport bikes that are capable of at least 150-180 miles per hour. I’ve talked to several people about how having these bikes here is insanity, and one person told me that they get taken to an abandoned airstrip and “exercised”, which makes sense but frightens me, given the safety equipment (or lack thereof) I have seen. More on this later...



So, this picture is taken outside of a place called the Russian Market. It’s one of several markets in the city where they sell an enormous variety of goods. The first time I came here, I came with a friend’s friend to buy food. She asked me if I wanted to try bugs, and then pointed to what looked like cockroaches simmering in motor oil. I declined, then realized that the bugs were actually crickets, and considered it. The oil was the real roadblock though, because it was pretty gnarly. We ended up buying some fish instead. I was kind of concerned about getting sick from it, but it was so fresh that it’s fins were still moving despite the head having been chopped off, and we cooked it very well.

Anyway, it seems like a place where one could buy basically anything they wanted. I had been told that this was a good place to buy tools and parts for motos, as well as a book to learn some more Khmer. Turns out my information was pretty good. There was a vast section of book and map sellers, and given the right budget I’m fairly certain you could buy all the pieces to build an entire moto starting from scratch within a 30 foot circle of the market. There are also many tools for sale, although most of what I saw was power tools. It’s a good thing I brought a pretty complete set of metric Craftsman combination wrenches with me; it looks like they may be very helpful.

This first picture is looking down one of the very narrow hallways of parts, which are on the ground, on benches, and hanging from the rafters. Many of them are used, but there are people who sell new parts in and around the market. In the second picture, you can see new tires, oil, tail lights, etc. I was considering putting up a picture of the power tools, but replace the moto parts with drills, grinders, etc. and you’ve got it.




So that is a basic idea of the market. I have more pictures, and I’ll try and post them to some kind of photo account which I will have a link to once I do it.
Moving on to the rest of my adventures, I found out about a western run shop nearby, so I decided to go and meet the proprietor. On the way I took pictures of interesting vehicles to demonstrate the breadth of what people ride and drive here. I also tried to take pictures of shops and people working on bikes. I got some weird looks from people, and some people didn’t seem pleased. So I’ll try and be more careful in the future.

The first picture here is cool, it’s of three young guys working on what is the most common type of moto here, A Honda Super Cub or Korean replica of one made by Daelim. They are 50cc-90cc and basically like lawnmower engines on bicycles. I think I’ll primarily be fixing these out on Route 5.



These next few pictures are illustrative of the range of bikes here. The first picture shows a bunch of dirt bikes, one of which has been converted to a supermoto style, meaning it has street tires and firmer suspension to make it handle pavement better than a regular dirt bike. The ones behind it are more normal dirt bikes, which are fairly prolific here. I’m hoping to get an XR 250, which will transport me between the shop and Phnom Penh quite efficiently, and I’ve heard people give you more space in traffic when you are on a dirt bike, which could be critical. Also, there is apparently a dirt bike track outside the city. Maybe I could start a racing team from TC….. hmmmmm.



There are also awesome dirt bike variations, like the Suzuki grasstracker and Honda FTR 223. This next picture is the latter (it came from ze information super highway, it’s not mine). They are supposed to look like dirt trackers, which are motorcycles stripped down and raced on dirt ovals. I really wish they were imported to the states but I don’t think they are.



The last two pictures in this series could be called “surprising vehicles.” In the first picture we have a brand new Honda CBR, I’m not sure of its displacement, and a Buell, which is a somewhat uncommon American sport bike company that uses Harley Davidson engines. There was also a BMW sport bike at this shop. The guys in the shop looked sort of angry at me for taking these pictures, which may have had something to do with the fact that I’ve heard the people with the sport bikes are generally, uh, connected, as we would say in my glorious home state of New Jersey. I don’t know if it’s true though. The last vehicle picture is of a Hummer H2. I have now seen almost every Hummer variation sold, including the H1, H2 H3, and H3T.




Alright, so getting back to the point of this whole thing, I walked over to this shop owned and operated by an English expat. Unfortunately I have no pictures of this or any other developments after this, but his shop is kind of in a little nook without any signage out front. The owner was actually outside the shop, waiting for someone, when I walked up. I had not called him or written an e-mail, so I was quite fortunate he was around. We ended up getting lunch and he gave me a lot of good advice.

Turns out he just started fixing his own bikes about two and half years ago, and people heard he could do a good job and started asking him to work on theirs as well. So the business built through word of mouth, and the fact that he does not repair things ‘inventively’ and use bad parts to the detriment of the vehicles certainly helped him. Also, for the record, I forgot to tell him about the Blog, so I don’t want to use his name or the name of his shop without asking him. Sorry for all the He’s and Him’s.

He said there are many challenges to starting a shop here, and that I should be prepared for many setbacks. I kind of already new this, so I wasn’t upset by the comment, but was pleased when he told me about some places he knows to get legit Japanese and Thai parts, which are the best, and where to get tools. Unfortunately though, it sounds like some of the biggest problems with working on bikes here are improvised fixes, and the lack of preventative maintenance.

The former includes things like welding parts together, thereby preventing dis assembly of important systems of the bike. An example he gave was people welding the kickstarter to its shaft, so if you need to get the clutch case off you have to cut the kickstarter off and then find a new shaft, even though the starter ‘worked’ fine. The latter is pretty obvious in advertisements for bikes that I have been looking at. I saw one advertisement which claimed the bike was in good shape, and had never needed fixing. It had an original chain and sprockets, as well as tires. It was made in 1991. I declined to call that seller. So anyway, our lunch was very instructive, and I hope he can help me over the course of my time here.

The next thing I did was meet up with Leb Ke, one of my main Khmer contacts, and we went to a moto-repairing school to check it out and see if it would be good for me to work there. It was fairly rustic, and apparently I would need to pay a ‘special price’ to get one on one instruction with someone who speaks English. I am doing a test run this coming Monday, and then I’ll have a few days to decide if I want to follow through and take the course. We are looking into some other schools, just in case.

So that about does it for the day, this entry ended up being somewhat longer than I intended, but I hope you enjoyed it.

STOP THE PRESSES – Ok not really but I found an article about the sport bike scene in Phnom Penh, which is enlightening.

Here’s the link -

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:jDWdVQ7LhGsJ:www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2009042025381/Life-Style/powered-by-adrenaline.html%3FItemid%3D0+moto+repair+school+phnom+penh&cd=14&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a

It’s actually a cached file from Google, because I can’t see it otherwise without a subscription. So I hope it works. If it doesn’t, search “powered by adrenaline” and then click the little blue “cached” button below the link for the Phnom Penh Post. I don’t know how that lets you see it, but it does.

7-18-09 11:05 AM

So I am in Cambodia. It’s more than a little surreal, especially because I have mostly been e-mailing people and trying to comprehend the fact that I am actually here. I went to sleep at about 6 PM last night, and woke up at 6 AM. So far my achievements for the day have been reading several NY times and The Atlantic articles, and eating breakfast. This was my favorite article, I thought it was fascinating - http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness.

Yesterday was a pretty big day, since I bought some food, bottled water, and looked into buying a cell phone. I also tried to call a friend’s friend, and briefly talked to an angry Cambodian man. Who knows if I can keep that up for 9 months! Today I hope to continue my furious pace and actually buy a phone, and contact people who are in this country. Oh, I also would like to learn where to do laundry, buy clean water in bulk, get a motorcycle/scooter, use the internet outside my hotel (preferably for free), rent an apartment, source a translator, and find a pharmacy to buy shampoo and soap. This actually does sound like quite a bit. We’ll see how it goes.

Currently, though, I look out the window of my hotel and see what I believe is some sort of palace. It’s rather odd, after being home and across the street from a high school. Overall though, things are much more comfortable than I anticipated. I have not yet seen the poverty that I was expecting, and in fact people in cars seem to be driving Toyota Camry’s and Lexus SUV’s, the former being the same car that drove me to the airport. I’m sure this will change once I see more of the city, and be even less true outside of the city, but for now the initial transition has been easier than I expected (famous last words, especially considering the breadth of my Cambodian experience). I think the most annoying thing is that when I leave my hotel room, I am about as far from anonymous as possible. I’m used to being in cities like New York, where you have to be pretty direct when you want someone’s attention, and otherwise you are just another person. Here I walk down the street, or are just in line of sight, and guys are asking if I want a Tuk-Tuk, moto ride, etc. Hopefully I will become less self-conscious of my “noticability” as time goes on.

The whole car scene was actually the first thing I noticed, unsurprisingly. In a state of delirium brought on by 19 hours of flying (this does not include layovers, strictly time spent in planes) and about 4 hours of sleep, I was blown away by the cars, motorbikes, and their interactions that could only loosely be described as a “traffic pattern”. People fortunately drive quite slowly, but there is pretty total disregard for anything resembling a rule of the road. I don’t think the situation can be adequately illuminated in writing. I’ll try and take some video. It’s a good thing I brought a helmet and jacket from the states.

Getting back to the cars - yes, lots of people ride motorbikes of various makes and models that I’m sure I will get to know quite well, but there are a surprising number of cars. They also all appear to be made by Toyota, except for the odd Mercedes and a Range Rover Sport that I saw. Maybe Toyota built the “Japanese-Cambodian Friendship Bridge” that is labeled on my map (another accomplishment I forgot to mention, finding a map), and therefore secured a near monopoly on cars sold here.

A final word that actually has something to do with my project – I have walked (and been driven) past several repair shops, for both cars and motorbikes, and was comfortable with what I saw. Some were in buildings, some were on street corners. Many of them had people swinging large blunt objects into motorbike parts. I saw one shop that had half a dozen shiny new dirt bikes and a superbike outside! I was pretty shocked by this. I think it was a GSX-R, also known as suicide by extremely fast vehicle, especially with such lax traffic laws. I hope to navigate my way back to it at some point to see what the hot-rodders of Cambodia are up to. Anyway, there is a wide range of shops and skill levels, so whatever this projects leads to will probably not be massively weird to people. I found that encouraging.

Ok, I need to stop dilly dallying and go do some “work”.

First though, I really need to thank the people who have made it possible for me to be here. Some of them are, in no particular order, Mom, Dad, Biz, N+P, Q+K, M+P, Betsy and Neale, Michael and Jo-Ann Rapaport, Tom McEvoy, Hal Fried, The Lightman Family and the Harpswell Foundation, The Rotary Club of Schenectady and Mark Sheehan, Prof’s Bruno, Madancy, Anderson, and Brison, The Thacher School and my classmates from it, Quentin Keynes, and many others to whom I apologize for not including. I am in your debt.