Here in Cambodia there are quite a few ways to get around from place to place, today we will be focusing on the taxi. Taxi’s here in Cambodia are not quite like the ones we all know from home, you don’t just hail a cab, get in and go on your way.
There are van taxis, car taxis, and pickup truck taxis. Taxis tend to go to a specific location (Banon, Battambang, Sdau etc…) for a certain price and leave when the vehicle has enough people to make it worth the drivers while (usually 4-5 depending on the vehicle). Car taxis are ideal because you can only squeeze four people in the back seat and two people up front (not including the driver). This makes for a fairly luxurious ride. Van taxis tend to get cramped, same four people across rules apply and they have these weird makeshift bench things to make room for more people. Plus, everyone’s luggage it’s tight.
But pickup truck taxis are the ones that we have here at my site. They go down the road each morning at 7am and I stand on the side and flag one down hoping that the cab of the truck isn’t already really full so I can have some room for my knees. Usually the ride into town isn’t too bad. 2-3 people up front 2-4 people in back, comfortable even!
The ride home is what gets me; these pickup trucks are not only carrying people back and forth (in the cab and in the bed) but stuff, lots and lots stuff. The first time I rode the taxi home I watched as they piled more and more things into the bed of the truck almost doubling the size with the amount of stuff. Then about 8 people climbed into the bed sitting on top of all the stuff that was going. I then climbed in the cab hoping that not too many more people were along for the ride. In the back I was joined by 3 other women and a child, in the front passenger seat were two more women and sharing the driver’s seat was the driver and another man riding in the taxi. It was the slowest moving truck I had even been in…but I made it home. A few days later I took the same taxi home and just like last time there was incredible amount of stuff in the back and an even more amazing number of people up front. This time there were six people in the back (2 kids) and I shared the passenger seat with another woman while a man again shared the driver’s seat with the driver for a total of 10 people in the cab of the truck.
The taxi stand has become one of my favorite places. I typically will go into town once a week to spend a morning with the PCV’s in Battambang. I will take a taxi in and I always chat with the people I ride with, by now the driver will sometimes help me out and field a few of the typical questions for me. The ride back is even more entertaining. I go to the back corner of one of the markets where all the taxis to Banon are being loaded and leaving from. This is not a touristy area so at first I would get some very interesting looks walking back there alone. By now all the taxi drivers know me and call out “come with me! I’m leaving first!” “No, come with me! I’ll let you sit in the front!” “Come with me! I drive the fastest” this inevitably makes some of the women waiting for taxis curious and I always end up chatting with a few of them while I wait for the first taxi to finish loading so I can get home. It’s another one of those areas where I can see how far I’ve come. Everyone knows where I live and they usually let me sit up front because I am one of the first stops. The wait for a taxi can vary drastically from 20 minutes to last weekend when I just wanted to get home after a long day on the bus and waited for 3 hours (but that is its own story) and the time it takes to get into town or home can be from 30 minutes to over an hour depending on the number of stops. There is always great people watching and a great story from the taxi stand.
