Iconic Cyclo Disappearing From Phnom Penh's Streets

Oum Sok began working as a cyclo driver when he was 18. He says the city has become very expensive over the years, making it much harder to earn a living. (Photo: VOA - R. Carmichael)

Robert Carmichael, VOA
Phnom Penh 14 June 2010

The cyclo has been a distinctive feature of Phnom Penh's streets for 70 years, stretching back to the days when Cambodia was a French colony. But this form of transport has begun to fade away.

New York has its yellow cab. London has its red bus. But Phnom Penh has its cyclo - a three-wheeled bicycle with the driver perched on high above the rear wheel, and the passengers in a bucket seat slung between the two front wheels.

This iconic vehicle has proved a comfortable - if slow - way of getting around Cambodia's capital for the best part of a century. But that is changing.

Sharp decline

In the past decade the number of cyclos on the city's streets has declined sharply. Im Sambath heads the Cyclo Conservation and Career Association, which looks out for the interests of the drivers.

"Now we have around 1,300 cyclo drivers in Phnom Penh. But from our survey, in 1999 [we had] around 9,000 cyclos," he notes.

He estimates in five years, there could be only 500 or 600 cyclos left.

Why it's happening

Im Sambath says there are a number of reasons for the decline - from the changing travel habits of the Phnom Penh's citizens to the rise of the tuktuk - a motorized rickshaw.

"And tuktuks are quicker than cyclo, and can take their equipment from the market or something else easier than a cyclo," he says.

Cyclo drivers pay around 25 cents a month to join the Cyclo Association. The hundred or so members get washing facilities, HIV/AIDS education and other health benefits.

But most valuably, they get access to foreign tourists. Im Sambath says as local demand drops, foreign tourists are the future.

The association works with travel agents to arrange cyclo tours of Phnom Penh, in which tourists are pedaled around this flat city's compact array of sights.

Oldest driver

The association's oldest cyclo driver is 75-year-old Oum Sok. He has been pedaling the city's streets since he was 18.

Like most drivers, Oum Sok is from rural Cambodia where there is little work. Like them, he parks his cyclo on the sidewalk each night in a gaggle of other drivers, and sleeps in the bucket seat.

Ferrying tourists provides a reasonable living. Oum Sok earns $8 from the association for a day's work, plus any tips.

But it is no fortune. While waiting outside the city's National Museum for the tourists to emerge, he talks about the changes in his half century of pedaling people around Phnom Penh.

Down, but not out

He says when he was young, he could earn a lot, but now everything is expensive. Another thing is that the customers do not want to take a cyclo with an old man like him driving.

But he acknowledges his age can prove a benefit. In a culture that respects age, Cambodians tend to tip better than the tourists.

But tourists may be the way forward for most cyclo drivers.

Australian Margie Edmonds has just spent the morning as part of a cyclo tour with about 20 tourists.

"Well I just thought it was the most amazing way to do it," she says. "Their [the drivers] understanding of the traffic, and their kindness. It was one of the best experiences I've had in Asia. Great fun, very safe and very comfortable vehicles too."

Back at the association, Im Sambath says the cyclo is down, but not out.

He is optimistic that targeting the two million tourists visiting Cambodia each year will allow the dwindling stock of drivers to provide for their families in the provinces.

Cambodia: As rickshaws [cyclo] get cycled out, some look back

In Cambodia a decade ago, some 10,000 cyclo drivers – as rickshaws are called here – wheeled along Phnom Penh streets. Today there are fewer than 1,500.

Cyclo driver Porn Eab stands by his machine.(Arantxa Cedillo)

Phnom Penh street scene

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA - A Cambodian man pedals his three-wheeled pedicab on a road as he carries a foreign tourist in front of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. AP Photo/Heng Sinith.

Street scene from Phnom Penh

Cambodian cyclo drivers transport Buddhist paraphenalia for sale at a market in Phnom Penh. The International Monetary Fund said late last month that Cambodia's economy will contract 2.75 per cent this year as the global economic crisis takes its toll on the country. -- PHOTO: AFP

Cyclos Persist, But Under Hardships

An estimated 2,000 cyclos can still be found on the streets of Phnom Penh, but the numbers are dwindling.

By Pak Vichet, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
28 August 2008

On a recent afternoon, Chdou Kosey, a third-year student at the National University of Management, sat on his cyclo reading a book of conversational English. He peddled his cyclo, he said, to support his studies.

"If I used my family's money for my studies here, it would be too much for them," the 22-year-old said. "Therefore, I decided to peddle a cyclo in my free time."

Unlike other cyclo drivers, who are typically of an older generation, Chdou Kosey said he merely wished to explore the life of cyclo peddlers. Besides, he said, there are stories of many successful people who started off as cyclo drivers.

"In fact, I heard from my teacher that some excellencies also peddled the cyclo," he said. "The cyclo is just my temporary job."

The cyclo has been a ubiquitous vehicle since it was brought by the French under colonization. An estimated 2,000 can still be found, mainly in Phnom Penh, but the numbers are dwindling.

The cyclo has been a traditional job provider for many provincial poor. A typical cyclo driver often has no place to sleep but the street, or in pagodas, and they are often hustled away by police. Some people say the cyclo, though pollution free, may be on its last leg, as demand for them decreases.

Still, cyclo drivers persist. Pich Moeung, 66, who was waiting one day for a passenger outside the National Museum, said he had been peddling since Sangkum Reastr Niyum; his father had pulled a rickshaw for the French.

Now, he has a cyclo purchased on loan from a local organization. He pays about 1,000 riel per day from his 15,000 riel daily earnings, he said, "and the rest is used for buying food and for savings."

Keo Chantha, who sells cyclos from a shop in Phnom Penh, blamed the decrease in demand on the increased purchases of tuk-tuks and other passenger vehicles.

"There are many three-wheeled motorbikes, so I sold out [most of] my cyclos because there are fewer peddlers," she said. "I may stop doing this business in a year. Now there are about 10 cyclo shops left in Phnom Penh because there is no space for parking and no peddlers. I think it will disappear in the next four or five years."

With prices of food and other goods increasing nationwide, cyclo drivers say they have not seen an increase in their own fares. Faced with penny-pinching dilemmas, cyclo passengers seem lothe to part with increased fares.

"The riders are former customers, no new customers," said Chdou Kosey, the student. "Some dare to buy motorbikes, so they do not mind spending money for the high fuel. The price for cyclo remains the same."

Cambodia's cyclo drivers pedalling towards extinction

A woman with her goods ride a cyclo in Phnom Penh (Photo: AFP/File Tang Chhin Sothy)

By Suy Se

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Increasingly lost amid a sea of cars and scooters known as motor-taxies, these symbols of perhaps a more genteel era are struggling to remain relevant as Phnom Penh leaps towards modernity.

But that struggle appears to be a losing one, as cyclos -- pedal-driven rickshaws that were ubiquitous across what was once French Indochina -- fall out of favour and their drivers turn in greater numbers to more lucrative work.

"Modern things are coming, so out-of-date things like the cyclo will be gone," complains Khat Soeun, a wiry 43-year-old, as he squats next to his cyclo, bolting a leafspring to his broken vehicle.

On the best days Khat Soeun can make two US dollars -- half what he says he took home only a few years ago.

A cyclo driver(L) next to a Tuk Tuk in Phnom Penh (Photo: AFP/File Tang Chhin Sothy)

More often, though, he comes home with less after hours of grinding through the city's streets for just a few cents a ride.

"I cannot make as much money now as I did in the past because there are so many motorcycles and tuk-tuks," he says, referring to the large motor-driven carts that first appeared a few years ago and have begun to dominate public transport.

"We can't compete with them -- they are machines and go faster," he adds.

"Many drivers have changed from pedalling cyclos to driving motor-taxies instead."

Roughly 2,500 cyclos plied the streets of Phnom Penh in 2004, according to a survey conducted by the Cyclo Centre, which opened in 1999 to help drivers cope with their changing world by providing English lessons, healthcare information, free haircuts and laundry facilities.

Cambodians repairing a cyclo (Photo: AFP/File Tang Chhin Sothy)

That figure was down from 10,000 reported more than a decade ago.

"But nowadays there are only some 800 to 900 cyclo drivers pedalling the streets," says Im Sambath, the centre's project director.

"We are really worried about the future of cyclos," he tells AFP.

First introduced to Cambodia in 1936, the cyclo soon became a iconic part of Phnom Penh's city-scape. They still have a small, loyal following of mostly elderly customers who are put off by the sometimes hair-raising driving of motor-taxi drivers, known locally as "motodops".

Cyclos also remain popular with foreigners seeking a slow turn around the capital's tourist spots, but the drivers remain among the poorest city residents.

"It's my family's rice bowl, what I can make allows us to survive, but just day-to-day," Khat Soeun says.

Cambodian cyclo drivers bathing along a street in Phnom Penh (Photo: AFP/File Tang Chhin Sothy)

In recent years the Cyclo Centre has tried to re-ignite the love affair with cyclos, advertising them to tourists as cheap, environmentally-friendly transport and organising fund-raising "rallies" from Phnom Penh to distant provincial capitals.

"Our main target is to help the poor drivers to make a better living -- give them better information about health, urge them to quit smoking or inform them about issues like domestic violence," Im Sambath says.

The centre also offers drivers a rent-to-own plan that allows them to acquire their own second-hand cyclo for roughly 50 dollars after leasing it for about six months.

Drivers are otherwise forced to pay 50 cents a day to rent their cyclos from other operators, or borrow the 120 dollars it costs to buy a new one.

Cyclos "help poor and illiterate people feed their families," Im Sambath says, adding: "The cyclo is very important to us -- it's part of our culture."

A cyclo driver takes a nap (Photo: AFP/File Tang Chhin Sothy)

But the number of cyclos on the road is still "decreasing every day," says 41-year-old driver Va Thorn, a regular at the centre for three years who frequently uses his welding talents to fix broken cyclos for other drivers at discounted prices.

"The cyclo is really under threat, I'm afraid they'll disappear from Cambodia," he warns.

But better roads and a middle-class preference for motor vehicles has perhaps made their disappearance inevitable, says Chuch Phoeurn, a secretary of state with the Ministry of Culture.

"Cyclos are disappearing because society is changing," he says, adding: "When people have easier ways to get around, they'll abandon cyclos."