Motodop or Motodope? You Decide.

Those who believe in intelligent design have never met my motodop.

I suppose that I could rent a small motorbike to get around Phnom Penh, but then I would have to negotiate the streets around here.

Motorbike rental is very cheap, it comes in at under $10 a day for a Honda 100 or similar. Just go over to "Lucky! Lucky!" (the market leader in scooter rental) and they will hand you a key to a shiny Chinese-made Honda step-thru motorcycle.

However, I am terrified of the prospect of riding here though; traffic rules are vague and largely ignored. Red lights and stop signs are mainly decorative. I didn't bring along my crash helmet and there is no helmet in the country big enough that would fit my 7 3/4" (62-63 cm) head. (Of course, I would be the one in a hundred that would actually wear a helmet, most here do not even own one)

Rather than negotiate the streets on my own, I hire the services of a trained professional: a "motodop". These moto taxi drivers sit in groups on every street corner; they beckon any fat foreigner who dares to walk anywhere on his own. Phnom Penh is not a large city, rides around town rarely exceed 2000 reil, or fifty cents. Even at that paltry sum, I am overpaying; call it a "stupid tourist tax".

One would think that, what with the fairly predictable destinations of the fat farang, the taxi drivers would be pretty good at getting their fares to their destinations quickly and efficiently.

One would be wrong.

The streets here are numbered and fairly straightforward with easily visible street numbers and addresses. This makes no difference at all. One rarely gets to the destination without a detour or two.

The game is played thusly. A foreigner exits a building and a handful of motodops beckon and in unison, say "Taxi, Sir?"

As there is serious competition, the bolder ones walk right over and get into your personal space, even if you insist upon walking. They then offer all sorts of suggestions and diversions, some that would make a sailor blush.

As a reasonably intelligent individual, I have come prepared with a business card from my destination. All business cards here are the same: they are made of durable plastic and have the name and address in both English and Khmer, with a fairly straightforward map on the back of the card.

The group of drivers inspect the card, huddle amongst themselves and proclaim that of course they do, in fact, know where the destination is, that they have been there many times and that they would be deeply honored to bring you there.

So you plop your butt onto the back of some strangers (now seriously overloaded) Honda bike and toodle off in the wrong direction, down the wrong side of the street with nothing but oncoming traffic aiming straight at you.

This is somewhat disconcerting, especially when nobody is yielding an inch, least of which are the enormous, shiny new Japanese-made SUVs with blacked out windows sporting NGO plates, driven by some asshole and paid for by your charity dollars.

Several blocks and a few U-turns later, the Motodop concedes defeat and pulls over curbside to consult with a new group of bored Motodops, all of whom consult the business card and map again and have vastly different ideas of which direction we should have been going in the first place.

It is said that you get what you pay for. The Phnom Penh Motodop is the exception to this rule.