Mines in Cambodia
 

Hi guys,

I'm going to Cambodia next December and will do a 2up tour with my girlfriend with a rented motorbike.

I've read all the known warnings about mines, but I'd like to have some suggestions on this problem... Advices say not to leave the main roads... fine...but I guess in the countryside won't be so clear what a main road is compared to an off road path...or am I wrong?

I'm just trying to see if just stepping one meter out of the road during a 'toilet-stop' can be seriously dangerous or not! I'm not going to cross a field just as a short cut but I'm wondering which level of attention I'll need to pay.

Thanks
Ciao from Italy

Taomorris
Honda Africa Twin
Kawa Z750

I was also quite worried about mines before going to Cambodia, but in general, they dont seem to be a big problem for a tourist, unless he/she does something stupid. But there are said to be millions of those Pol Pot´s ´perfect soldiers´, that dont care if its peace or war, still buried in the soil, and lots of locals are killed and wounded each year. So the danger definitely is real, and not something you want to play around with.

And on the other hand, some tourists did not seem to understand this, and you saw some falangs, who maybe thought they were cowboys, making detours, riding in the bushes with their bikes, etc. Probably still not a very big chance, unless you happen to be in one of the most heavily mined areas (but I doubt they were aware of those areas).

I´d discuss with the rental company, or others who have more experience riding there, about the areas you intend to ride, and see if there are any high-risk areas on your itinerary. In such areas, I´d stay strictly on the road, or well-worn paths used frequently by locals, in fact I wouldnt even step into the pristine-looking nature for a pee, not once. Might be a good idea to do so anywhere in Cambodia, although the risk in other areas is actually much higher than some others. If you do that, you´re very much unlikely to have any trouble with mines.

I was especially warned about the border areas near Angkor, but they are remote regions, with very few roads to begin with. Its an astonishingly beautiful country, with lovely people, and bikes are a great way to see it.

Edit: meant to say that the mines aren´t on regularly used roads or footpaths anymore, though there is one exception: floods, which could basically move them anywhere (but this must be quite rare).

Of course it all depends but in general, if you stay on the highways, the path up to bokor hill station and such you should be fine. When I was biking in Cambodia (about two years ago) highways were hard to loose. Most of them are big, broad and in bad conditions. The local paths look more like goat paths.

Best Advice is to ask around. At least in bigger city there's also gonna be some expats around. They are known to give sound advice in rare moments of clarity.

One of the heavily mined areas is the border region with Thailand. The northeast (Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri) are supposed to be pretty much free of mines.

In the 90's I spent some time on foot in a heavily mined area of Mozambique. I think it was pretty typical of mined areas everywhere. Basically, the locals know where the danger lies—they've had ample time to find out, through trial and error and lots of lost limbs and such. Some of them were probably present anyway when the mines were laid, and some may have been involved in the fighting.

However, their knowledge is very detailed, and this means that they might tell you an area is safe when they're really just talking about a specific clearing or field or pathway, not the larger area around it. I won't go into the details, but I learned that the boundary between safety and serious risk was often just a matter of inches one direction or another along a heavily-used pathway, road or even railway line.

Language barriers in such a situation can contribute another layer of confusion, since a lot of important communication necessarily happens in gestures and pidgin. And, like locals everywhere, the people who live in a mined area know and take for granted background information of which which we Westerners are ignorant. If they're members of an oral culture they're especially adept at passing on detailed information about their environment, without signposts or written instructions of the sort to which Westerners are trained to respond. If you aren't equipped to participate in this information exchange (that means you, me, and all our friends and fellow tourists), there's a lot you'll miss out on. In a mined area, missing information might have serious consequences.

All of which suggests going only where others go, very specifically and deliberately. Or, if you prefer, accepting a level of elevated risk as knowingly and purposefully as possible, without romanticizing or engaging in rash excesses of wishful thinking. As a tourist, the chances you'll have any serous trouble are incredibly slight, but there are real perils in relying on negative event feedback ("I've peed behind 20 bushes and nothing has happened to me; this means I've proved it's safe to pee behind bushes.").

Hope that helps.

Mark