Michael Batson

Roads in Cambodia have come a long way since my first visit in 2004. The main land entry point from Thailand at Poipet for example, was along a dirt road badly rutted, virtually impassable in the wet with rudimentary one-lane bridges comprised of bare metal frames laid roughly across waterways. Vehicles inched on to them one wheel at a time. Then there was the road to Koh Kong, geographically one of Cambodia’s most isolated towns, located at the south-western tip of the country across the Cardamom Mountains. A proper road hadn’t yet been built. In the wet, land transport edged its way through mud. Vehicles often had to stop, the passengers forced to alight to lighten the load, or to move boulders out of the way or to push, the wheels buried axle-deep in mud. Progress was slow and painful. The rivers were crossed by rudimentary ferry, there being no bridges. My first trip from there in 2006 was rough and ready, but it was also an adventure in a time not seen again, or so I thought. At Sre Ambel, the road to Koh Kong leaves the highway to Sihanoukville, the country’s solitary deepwater port. National Route 4 stemmed from the early 1960s, when USAID constructed a highway on the old French-built colonial route. In the intervening years the road had been poorly maintained, and thanks to shortcuts taken by US engineers, hadn’t been properly constructed in the first place. Heavily laden trucks with insecure loads from the port crawled along at a snail’s pace. There were