I was on my own, coming back from Saen Monourom near the Vietnamese border, and had been back on a tarmacked road for all of about half an hour, after 3 days of potholed dirt tracks. Tired and dehydrated, I was looking for a nice place to stop for a drink, when an old boy on a scooter decided to pull out without looking, just as I passed by. I remember seeing him about to pull out, but I just couldn’t believe he was going to actually do it; I was the only other vehicle on an otherwise empty, straight road, how could he not have seen me?!
But he did, I swerved and clipped his back wheel, my front wheel went haywire, and the next thing I knew the ground was rushing up to meet me and then I was sliding along the tarmac. Luckily I wasn't going fast when it happened, maybe 20 or 30 mph. Unfortunately my protective clothing was limited to shorts, a vest, sandals and a pair of fake Ray-Bans. And, incredibly stupidly, no helmet.
I remember clearly the moment I realised I actually was going to crash. I couldn’t believe it. I think when you’re travelling for a long time a false sense of security can take over. You start believing in half-baked, stoned ideas like Invincibility Theory, and taking stupid risks that you would never take at home. Like hiring a motorbike and attempting to traverse a pot-holed and landmined country with almost no motorcycling experience. Now inevitable pain and possible serious injury was rushing up to meet me, and I just didn’t want to believe it was really happening.
The tarmac met me head on. I remember seeing my fake Ray-Bans smash before my eyes as I slid along the road on my front.
A few moments later I’m lying on my back, groaning. But I was conscious. Nothing felt broken. I could move my legs. Suddenly I felt euphoric! I was OK! I gingerly got up, aware of a lot of blood on my exposed legs and arms. My elbow hurt, and I lifted up to have a look. A flap of skin hung down and I could see the white of my bone. I bent over and started retching, as the adrenaline and euphoria disappeared and everything started to hurt. It was all superficial damage, but I felt like the Kray brothers had given me a working over with a potato peeler.
I was suddenly painfully aware of the fact that I was miles from anywhere in a developing country, and no-one knew where I was.
A few bystanders and another bloke on a scooter (I never found out his name) had by now made their way over to me. The guy whose wheel I’d clipped was fine and had already got back on his bike and zipped away. I can’t say I blame him- he’d probably got into a lot of trouble for causing an accident to a farang, and there were other people around to help.
“Come, we go hospital!”
I tried to pull myself together and think. What about my bike and my bag? All my stuff was in there, including about $200 in cash, my passport, credit card and travelers' cheques. I couldn’t just leave it. But my hands were all cut up and I didn’t think I’d be able to untie the bag and get my money belt out anyway. The guy with the scooter insisted.
“We go hospital!”
“What about my things?”
“He take care! He take care!” he said, pointing at an old man tending a road-side stall fifty feet or so up the road.
I didn’t want to leave all my worldly belongings with total strangers, but had no willpower to argue. I was shaken up and everything was starting to really hurt, and I just wanted to get to a hospital. I asked my Good Samaritan how far it was and he said it was 2 minutes away. Still dizzy and not really sure what was going on, I gingerly got on the back of his bike and we were away.
Hospital turned out to be a whitewashed concrete bungalow with a conspicuous lack of facilities. I was led to a room with a creaky iron-frame bed next to a barred window. Half a village crammed round the window outside to get a better look at the silly farang who’d come a cropper. The clinic’s staff were sympathetic but firm, frowning as I whimpered pathetically while they put stitches in my elbow and ankle and scrubbed the gravel from my arms, legs, shoulder and chest (incidentally I thought I’d lost my left nipple, but a few weeks later as the scabs fell away it was still there). Half the village watched on, and the local policeman turned up to question me as I was being scrubbed-and-stitched, as my Good Samaritan translated.
Eventually the ordeal was over. Trussed up like a mummy, I offered to pay for the time and materials (I doubt whatever meagre resources they had were intended for use on dumb backpackers who couldn’t drive a motorbike properly). They seemed quite taken aback. Eventually a figure of 5000 riel was mentioned, roughly $1.25. As it turned out I only had 4000 riel in my pocket.
Everything else I had with me, including passport, credit cards and about $200 in cash, was still strapped to the back of my bike, back where I’d had the crash. I’d been gone for about 2 hours now and despite my good experiences of Cambodian hospitality, I was getting anxious about my stuff. Good Samaritan (to my eternal shame I never got his name) ferried me back to the scene of the accident. Getting on the back of anything with two wheels again was precisely the last thing I wanted to do at this moment in time, and wasn’t exactly easy given my bandaged and sorry state; but thankfully he was a better driver than me and we made it back to the bike without further incident.
I needn’t have worried. I’d crashed near a Cambodian service-station; a roadside wooden shack selling soft drinks and plastic water bottles filled with petrol. My bike had been carefully wheeled to the shop’s forecourt, rested on its stand, and apart from that had not been touched.
As I retrieved my money from my bag, I had to leaf clumsily with bandaged hands through a wad of dollars to retrieve a $10 note, the smallest denomination I had (the Cambodian currency is so devalued, that when you withdraw money from the back they give it you in US dollars). The elderly patron, dressed in a pair of flip flops and a tattered pair of trousers held together with a piece of string, refused to keep any change when I bought a beer, a coke and some cigarettes. Instead, he and his wife carefully counted out the change for me, making sure I knew they were giving me the right amount. He didn’t speak any English, and instead just kept giving me a toothless smile and making the hands-together gesture at me, which I tried to return though my arms and hands were bandaged and stiff.
I was so relieved and grateful to him for looking after my stuff, I was welling up. I really wanted to give him something but he wouldn’t take any money.
By this time a passing station-wagon had been flagged down and negotiations were under way to take me and now un-rideable bike the 300 or so km back to Phnom Penh. The driver was a well-dressed Vietnamese returning from some business up north, and was not as open-hearted as my local saviours. He wanted $100, but I got him down to $50.
I looked around for the original Samaritan-on-a-moped, who had never asked for any reward, but he had already gone, so I never got to thank him. As an after-thought, I gave the shop-owner my rain-poncho just before we left, and he accepted this gift.
