A wild ride into Cambodia's past

As they assembled the contraption, my guide related the history of the Bamboo Train.

It had been built by the French around 1870, when this land was called Indochina, to haul coffee and bananas from jungle plantations into the city.

Over the decades, larger, more powerful steam locomotives replaced it. Soon it was forgotten, reclaimed by the jungle. When the Khmer Rouge began their crusade to return the country to the Stone Age, larger trains were destroyed, including the tiny steam engine that had once plied these tracks.

These tracks had been spared, however, because they had been overgrown by jungle, until recently.

After the Khmer Rouge fell, people living in the jungle remembered the tracks and quickly reclaimed them. The current Bamboo Train was up and running quickly, but it remains a local secret.

After hearing the story, we were invited to board the train. We were not quite prepared for the three motorbikes and seven additional people who boarded with assorted chickens and small livestock. I figured we were overloaded by at least a ton, but before I could say a word, we were whizzing through the jungle at about 30 miles per hour.

We sat cross-legged with our arms over our heads to deflect tree branches and overgrown vines, and we laughed at the insanity and genius of it all.

Everyone was yelling as we raced past rice fields. If any weight had shifted, I suspect the entire operation would have crashed into the bushes. The only braking system was to turn off the engine and coast to a stop.

For 40 minutes we bounced hard as the wheels skipped over each connection of the track. Several bamboo bridges that had been jury-rigged over small streams caused me to close my eyes and utter brief prayers.

Finally, we began to slow and gradually coasted to a stop at the edge of the jungle.

One must marvel at the creativity of it all. In this country, machinery is as rare as a two-headed fish. In the city, countless cars sit in the middle of busy roads, abandoned where they stopped running because their owners didn't know how to fix them. I saw cars being towed by water buffalo and never an airplane in the sky.

Our guide told us that we had to ride our motorbikes the last two miles into town because the train is considered illegal and unsafe, and the local police would arrest us if they knew we were using it.

Now he tells us!

As I mounted my bike, I watched several men pick up the "train," turn it around, and set it back on the track for its return journey into the jungle.

A woman with pigs and a small boy leading a buffalo were waiting to board. I was grateful that they had not been part of our entourage.

Now when I am tired and hungry, feeling defeated by some obstacle or burden, or stuck in a remote airport where no one can understand a word I say, I remember days like that one. I recall the little bits of magic like the Bamboo Train and I know this is why I travel.

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