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It’s been two hours on the busy highway 6 and it’s almost mid-day. Small wooden huts that line each side of the highway peddle all kinds of paraphernalia - fruit, vegetables and cooked food as well. Good option for a quick bite to calm the pangs in my stomach, I thought, as I pulled over near one such hut and got my English to Khmer phrase book out. 'What do you have to eat?' I ask as indicated in the book, only to be greeted with a wide smile and some giggles. I look around before I find mounds of bananas sitting in a bamboo basket in the corner. I proceed to point out to the bananas, indicating I’d like two. The young lady and her husband look at each other and laugh uproariously before trying to hand me two stems-full. I gesture that I want only two, to which they shake their head in disagreement. Okay, so I’ll settle for what appears to be freshly fried banana fritters (which I usually hate) for the moment. 500 reil (about 10 cents US) for a pile of six big fritters is a bargain. I settle down besides my motorcycle and hungrily bite into them. Rather crunchy for bananas, but I dismiss it as the Cambodian style of doing things. The taste is masked by the batter, but it’s not bad. I glance at one, only to realise my so-called banana fritter has a little black hairy prong sticking out of it. Detailed investigation reveals that banana fritters on Cambodia’s menu cards equals batter fried Tarantula. I stare at my fritter in disbelief, as the locals fall about laughing. Funny - very funny.
The ride to Siem Reap, a 311 km journey, was a touch under four hours including a brief food stop and doing the thing I usually do, run out of gas. Highway 6, which connects Phnom-Penh to Siem Reap, is a single-carriageway black-top that is the centre of all activity for villages that dot the sides of this road. It is also the village market, local playground, grazing fields and every Cambodian’s dream of an expressway. So while I’m trying to make good time to Siem Reap, dodging cattle, kids and the pedestrians sauntering across, I get buzzed by speeding Chrysler 300Cs and Bentleys. Nothing different from the riding conditions I’m used to back home, except this is in fast forward as the Honda XR250 I’m straddling is maxed out at about 104 kph and the knobby’s are really starting to show how much they hate tarmac.
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