The 3pm departure from Phnom Penh was punctual but snail like. Snail like for at least the first forty mins which saw the train crawl through the Phnom Penh suburbs allowing passengers to witness the curious phenomena of life close to a railway line being either attractive or imperative for swathes of what appear to be normal people in the first instance.
The heavily streamlined engine unit pulled two covered, air conditioned carriages and several goods wagons. The carriage’s centre aisled, padded, un-ergonomic, bench style seats held the uncanny ability to prevent sleep beyond the first fifteen minutes of the five hour journey to Kampot. As if in evil collusion the deceptively mild looking air con units produced an icy awakeness in the carriage to seemingly endorse the seats no sleep regime.
The engine driver had clearly been cautioned over admittance of freeloading, hop on, hop off passengers in response to which he was well advanced in cleverly creating a pretense of enormous speed through use of the powerful air horn to mimick the fast moving emergency vehicle passing you with it’s siren blaring effect.
I was often struck by the extent of the flat open space we passed through that was either non arable or supported a crop that left little evidence of it’s presence after harvesting. There was the occasional house visible often with tethered white ox type cattle in the fields nearby. Were the proceeds from sale of the cattle their main means of income? I tried to imagine the life style of families living in these remote areas.
At around the half way mark the train pulled up at Takeo station where we were invited to alight and purchase refreshments from the locals. Apart from eggs fish and chicken most of the remaining offerings were unfamiliar to us and purchased out of intrigue, I felt. I gauged the reaction in the carriage to the taste of the unfamiliar foods as pleasant surprise but it could have simply been the joy of temporary distraction from the seat and air con torture.
The pen-ultimate hour or so of the journey saw the sun go down on the starboard side of the train that I translated as a sort of re-assurance that time was indeed passing and in theory at least our destination approaching.
Our arrival at around 8pm in Kampot was met by the noisy, inquisitive but friendly sprinkling of Tuk Tuk drivers. I paid $5 to get away from the railway and into town.
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| Takeo Station |
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| Goods wagons |
Down The Road 