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RE: From Trikes To Bikes In Petchaburi: Asean Transportation

NIce to see old traditions kept alive, lots of towns here in Cambodia still have "cyclos" as they're called here. I actually was a cycle rickshaw driver in Colorado for two years in my younger days, but carrying up to three and four people in a town with a slight slope destroyed my knees. I totally understand why these guys rarely take more than two folks around.

I'm old fashioned, even here in our village all the locals laugh at my family and I because we ride a Honda Cub 90 and 50, bikes that are considered too slow to climb the mountain pass we live on.

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And I guess your passengers were larger than the average Cambodian! I am tempted to ask one of these guys to let me have a go pedaling - it's flat so I shouldn't embarrass myself too much.

Haha, yes, heavy indeed, and I averaged $10 a day averaging around 70-100 miles, worst business ever. I used to argue with rickshaw and tuk-tuk drivers when I first moved to Cambodia because they were carrying a lighter load than me, going a shorter distance, and also charging me 5 times more than I would've made in my own country. I am almost 100% sure they think I'm lying when I tell them I once did their job, but carried a 400% heavier load uphill for a 1/5th of the monthly income, haha.

The one rare upside is that when going slightly downhill the wind doesn't affect you because the momentum of all that weight keeps propelling you. Random factoid, once had a drunk passenger punch a guy on the sidewalk from my pedicab, talk about a legal nightmare.