So it has been quite a while since I last updated the blog, and I’ve got several posts that should be up soon. This post is about my trip to Sala Lehk Prahm, where the shop is supposed to be built. I went with two guys who work with The Harspwell Foundation who have been tremendously helpful to me. They are in one of the pictures, and their names are Leb Ke and Yousos. I went with Yousos to where they grew up, which is about 10 minutes outside of SLP. Yousos showed me his home and I got to meet his parents, who were very nice. I should have taken a picture to give people an idea of what the Cambodian countryside is like, but that will have to be next time.
The main point of the trip, though, was to check out the building sites where we may rent land to build a shop, and to try and get an idea of what the competition is up to. And since I am probably going to live in SLP for quite a few months, I was eager to see what it was like.
I’ll start with a description of the trip out there, which was quite lengthy. SLP is about 53km outside of Phnom Penh, and I was riding this wild steed the whole way. (the one with the purple seat)
It’s a moto I have been renting while the dirt bike I am buying is getting worked on (more on that in a later post). It’s 100 or 110cc’s and tops out at about 80 kph (kilometers per hour, about 50mph) which is actually really fast on what is basically a large bicycle with a horrifically bad front brake. The back brake slows the scooter down well, but it’s less efficient than a good front brake and locks up more easily, so you have to be very sensitive and not brake too hard. I have seen several people here get really squirrely when it has been wet out because they lock their back brake and start to slide.
Brief interlude - Because of weight transfer, having a strong front brake makes much more sense. When you use the front brake, the vehicle (cars included, not just those with two wheels) wants to rotate around the front wheel, pushing it into the ground. Using the front brake gives the front tire more traction and allows you to apply more force to the brake without locking the wheel up, which will slow the bike down much faster than primarily using the back brake. When you use the rear brake alone the moto doesn’t want to rotate, so you don’t get the amplified traction on that tire. This is the major reason sporting cars and motorcycles have larger and more powerful brakes on their front ends, and why if you watch motorcycle racing, the back ends of the bikes wiggle around when the riders are braking. They are just on the threshold (and sometimes cross it) of having the rear tire lift off the ground, making it very unstable. Depending on the corner, this can happen when decelerating from 180-ish miles an hour. It’s pretty awe-inspiring to watch.
Anyway, while I was following Yousos up there, we went 50 kph or less the entire way. The way back is when I found the top speed of the scoot, I promise I was careful and was only travelling at that speed for 10 seconds or less at a time. Going out there took about an hour and a half, coming back took….. less….. Here is a picture of the road on the way up there, with a neat almost-canopy of trees.
So we arrived in SLP and got some noodles. My first impression was that there was not a lot of stuff in SLP, but it does get a fair amount of moto traffic, which is promising. The nature of the moto traffic is important as well. I have been going to a moto repair school for a week and the course I am taking is for the oldest and most basic moto’s, because it seemed logical that outside of Phnom Penh the older, cheaper moto’s would be most prevalent. As it turns out, that assumption is not entirely correct. At our competitors repair shops, we saw some nearly brand new machines, or at least new enough to be different from what I’m learning.
Above is a picture of the largest and, according to Leb Ke, the most prestigious shop in SLP. On the left is the owner, who is just finishing rebuilding a wheel. He has already finished lacing new spokes to a rim, and appears to be truing the rim, which means making it round and straight. In the center of the photo is what I think is a Suzuki Viva, which is a 100cc bike similar to the one I rent. Its engine is basically the same as the super old moto’s, just a little bigger and with some updates, like a CDI ignition system instead of a points based one. However, outside the frame of this picture is a newer type of moto, with what I think is a shaft drive system that also makes up a single sided swingarm, and the new moto’s are more compact than the old types. I’ll try and take some pictures that better explain the differences I’m talking about, although people are probably are more interested in food, the Cambodian people, and lots of other things. So if anyone wants to see more pictures of the bikes, let me know and I’ll throw them up. Otherwise I guess I’ll try and focus on stuff with a broader appeal. But I’ll probably end up having more descriptive posts about the bikes, because they are a (perhaps the) major part of my experience here.
Getting back to the sites we were looking at, the first picture below this paragraph is a view down SLP’s main street (which is Route 5, the road to Phnom Penh). In the second picture you can see Route 5 crossing a dirt road which I think is one of the bigger intersections. The first potential shop site was actually immediately to my right when I took the picture. So it only requires one turn and is probably 150 or 200 feet off Route 5. The other two lots are on the road you can just see in the bottom right corner of the second photo. The third photo is a picture of one of these other lots. This is actually a bad picture of the lot, which is on the right side of the frame, and only half of it is shown, but it has Leb Ke on the left and Yousos on the right, which I thought was important. Plus the building behind them shows the size of the lot, about 4 meters by 20 meters. Also, all the lots basically looked the same, and I’ll describe their positions and best I can, but I can’t put up pictures of all of them because it takes way too long to load pictures on the internet here.
So the lot in the third picture faces Route 5 but is one ‘block’ away from it and another lot is across the street so it’s physically closer to Route 5, but faces away from it. These two lots are actually behind an established repair shop (the last picture in this post shows it’s machining capabilities). I’m looking for advice on what site would be best, and am concerned about the fact that none of them are actually on Route 5, which would obviously be ideal. Apparently that is much more expensive though. I’m curious as to whether people think that it’s good to be behind another shop, keeping in mind that businesses in Cambodia tend to be grouped together by their purpose, or if the proximity would have a negative impact. I also asked Leb Ke to try and get an idea of how much it would cost to build some sort of building.
One last note is that the established shops were surprisingly well equipped. It appeared that each shop did its own machining of parts, because they both had fairly large drill presses, and impressive lathes. Here is a picture of the second best shop in town, you can see the substantial set-up. The more prestigious shop had a larger lathe, but my picture did not include as much of the other stuff.
That’s about it for the trip up to SLP, I have more pictures but can’t put them up here. I think I’m going to start a photo album somewhere, and when I get that up I’ll post a link so everyone can check out all my pictures. I hope everyone’s well, and I’ll post more stuff up as soon as I can.
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