Michael Batson

The road from Phnom Penh was narrow, uneven and the much promised leg room for passengers only held true if you were Cambodian.  Traffic was slow, often reaching a near crawl behind agricultural machinery towing trailers packed with passengers or avoiding bicycles or overloaded motos, all competing for too little space offered on National Route One, the main road to Vietnam.  Everyone who could, would overtake everyone who couldn’t, adding to the chaos as dump trucks careered onwards into the oncoming traffic.  There was no shoulder for overtaking, no road markings.  Shop fronts and houses almost touched the tarmac, a metre or two in it at best. At one point a marquee for a wedding occupied part of one lane, the guests were sitting in the road.To make matters worse two of the guests from the local were on the bus. Both were from down Surrey way somewhere.  They had shared the table next to mine and oblivious to others had reported their activities in monotonous tones.  Every time one of them spoke, she reminded me of Victoria Beckham, and she made about as much sense.Not only had they spent the last two nights eating and drinking within earshot, they were now seated across the aisle.  In a loud, whining voice “Posh” was imparting her knowledge of what is worth “doing” in Vietnam to some geezer half-way down the bus, who had allotted eight days to getting Vietnam “done”.Roads in the kingdom have much improved, thanks largely to foreign assistance. Paradoxically