Asian Traffic

It's really amazing to see and understand traffic in the various countries of Southeast Asia. While in Malaysia it's basically like in Europe, in Thailand traffic laws are more regarded like a guide of conduct - You CAN follow them, but you don't really HAVE to, but if you do, it works out okay. Motorbike riders frequently jump red lights in Bangkok (the only city i know with 5 minute red light intervals) when they don't see anything coming, and cabbies just turn the opposing lane into an extra right-turn lane when they see that the opposing traffic has a red light. On highways with separate streets for opposite directions, you quite often see vehicles that go the opposite direction on the stopping lane on the side of the street.
In Bali, there's only one law: The bigger vehicle has the rightaway. Other than that you can pretty much do whatever you want.

Cambodian traffic is pretty special though: As with most other things in Cambodia, there just seems to BE no regulation whatsoever! It's pretty much complete anarchy, you'd be hard pressed just to find a traffic sign here (there are some, but only very very few!) and quite a few cars drive around without any license plates (!). People just drive however they want to, a red light isn't much more than a suggestion to maybe stop. Only in Cambodia you can see people going straight AND people from the opposing lane making a left turn (crossing the ones going straight - Cambodia is one of the few asian righthand driving countries) at the same time, crisscrossing eachother like the finale in a Chinese acrobat circus show - without any accidents!

One thing seems to be very important in most asian countries: Always make extensive use of the horn. Mostly to show other drivers and people on the side of the street that you're there. When we drove from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh the driver must've been honking his horn for almost half the whole trip in total (that's about 3 hours). And it was a VERY LOUD horn. Overtaking in Cambodia just seems to work so much better if you constantly honk your horn while doing it. A vehicle here is only considered disfunctional when the horn's not working! ;-)

Update: I have gotten confirmation by locals that there really WERE no traffic laws or regulations whatsoever in Cambodia until last year! They're working on getting them established though..