After being stranded abroad and facing years of lockdowns and curfews in Suriname, we now have more freedom of movement than ever in our new ride.
My First Piaggio Ape 🛺 A Tick Off The Bucket List
It may sound silly, but my dream car for the last 25 years has been a Piaggio Ape, more recently and specifically a Piaggio Ape Auto+ 435cc Diesel. Before we left Cambodia a few years ago, our family transport was a Bajaj RE, an autorickshaw very similar to our new Piaggio Ape. I was bummed that a few months after purchasing my Bajaj, Piaggio began exporting Ape's to Cambodia, so I missed my opportunity to own my dream car.
In the USA I used to restore and tune vintage Vespas and Lambrettas, and I've owned several different kinds of old Italian scooters through the years, but always wanted my own Piaggio Ape. I never thought I'd end up with one as awesome as I now have, but still @sreypov and I wanted to pimp it out with rain doors and a few other mods.
Roadside Stitching 🪡
This post is actually not in sequential order, I do have a post about the day we picked up our Ape from the dealership, but my phone was dead that day. I used my wife's phone to document that special day, but she was at the market when I had time to make a post, so I'll share that with you all another day.
This post is about the awesomeness of scarcely regulated small scale roadside businesses in Cambodia. The one we hired on this day was a tuk-tuk upholsterer, whom fitted our rain doors and made some reinforcements to the canvas shell. Of course when places like this work on your ride, you sometimes end up with new holes in other places.
Killin' Time ⌛
The area of Phnom Penh where we got our ride modded was a busy intersection. There wasn't much to do in the area, and there was little shade, so we did our best to stay entertained, hydrated, and patient. The crew had never worked on a ride like ours, so I watched to make sure as few mistakes and unnecessary holes as possible were made.
We hung around, chatted with the workers occasionally, took photos for Hive content, and dreamed about the adventures we will have in our diesel-powered family transport.
It's hard to go anywhere in Cambodia and not bump into fish being dried in the sun. Even this impromptu shop that is set up each morning and broken down in the evening made time to dry some fish on the jobsite.
@sreypov got friendly with the wife, and we found out the team is a husband and wife crew with their kids helping, a real family operation.
Finishing Touches 🪄
We spent the better part of a day at the tuk-tuk upholstery place, but we have rain doors in addition to some new unwanted holes on top that will also allow rain in, but I've learned through the years to not have high hopes for attention to detail when it comes to Cambodian work like this.
I'm absolutely in love with our new family transport, and the diesel engine just puts along like a tractor. 1st gear has so much torque that no throttle is required, and it's the perfect gear for inching forward in city traffic.
I leave with this evening shot, @sreypov waiting in the Ape for some vegan takeaway from an underground Cambodian vegetarian restaurant. $2.50 can feed the family for an evening, but that sometimes comes with fishing a few hairs out of your food, a small price to pay for such affordable and tasty food.
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