We have heard many horror stories about the road conditions in Cambodia. People frequently disregard traffic laws and you basically need a tank to get over all of the pot holes. One such stretch of road, famous for being particularly bad, is the road from the border town of Poipet to Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor. Most of the people we spoke with said the trip was horrible at best and to seemingly make matters worse for us, most had made the journey during the dry season. Regardless of what people had said about the road, we thought that there was some degree of hype about it and were fairly confident about the durability of the Toyotas, especially after having them blessed by some friendly monks a few days earlier.
After spending the night in Poipet (which was reminiscent of the bar scene from Star Wars
According to the map, Route 6 is a "major highway," but it is more like a rally car course. This road made the Plenty Highway in outback Australia look like the autobahn. Add a little bit of heavy rain a few days earlier and you have all of the makings of quite an adventure. After about 30 kilometers, Steve and I both concurred that this was the worse road either of us had ever been down.
It is really difficult to describe just how bad the road is and even more difficult to understand why. Poipet is a major border crossing for the thousands of people that flock to see Angkor Wat each year. Rumor has it that one of the airlines flying into Siem Reap has paid some corrupt government official to divert road funds elsewhere in the hopes that the road will become so bad that people will have no choice but to fly. We did encounter signs of construction here and there, but the funny thing is, it only seemed to make the road worse. The ruts, pot holes and corrugation in the recently "improved" areas were worse than the stretches of road that had been neglected for what looked like decades. 
In total, the drive from Poipet to Siem Reap took over 4 hours. There were some stretches of road where we managed to pick up the speed a bit, but mostly we cruised long stretches of road where 20 km/hour was about all that your teeth could handle. The official distance from Poipet to Siem Reap is about 175 kilometers, but if you include all of the zig zagging to avoid pot holes and oncoming traffic and the detours around washed out bridges, it was probably closer to 200. We saw countless cars and trucks scattered along the side road and in many cases right in the middle that were not quite up to the challenge. Fortunately for us, both the Thundra and Little Pepe made it in one piece, but I am sure they are both a little upset at us… the Tundra is now orange from all of the mud and dust and the Buddhist amulet hanging from the rear-view mirror of the Sequoia snapped off after about 40 km. I am sure we will encounter road conditions that are just as bad if not worse than HWY 6 in Cambodia, but I don’t think they will be considered highways.
