Documentary : Through the Parrot’s Beak: a Bleak Road to Cambodia : The only practical route from Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh is by car on historic Route 1. Don’t bring credit cards; they only take cash on this journey.

More than a decade after the dreaded Khmer Rouge Communists were ousted from power in Cambodia by a Vietnamese invasion, it hasn’t gotten much easier getting to this dilapidated capital city.

With only four flights a week to the outside world, booked solid for weeks in advance, the only practical route for most travelers to Phnom Penh is to drive from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam along Route 1, which during the Vietnam War functioned as an incursion route for the South Vietnamese army into Cambodia’s “Parrot’s Beak.” Although the two cities are less than 200 miles apart, the drive now takes more than six hours.

Because Cambodia’s diplomatic relations are limited to Vietnam, India and Soviet Bloc countries, I must pick up a visa at the Cambodian Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, once known as Saigon. A consulate official greets me with a broad grin and informs me that I just missed the last bus of the day to his country.

He volunteers that he has “a friend” who will drive me for $300. When I blanch at the price, the official replies coolly that without availing myself of his friend’s car, my visa could take days, if not weeks, to process. Only a fool would argue with such logic.

One drawback to road travel in Vietnam and Cambodia: Although traffic bears right, as in the United States, most of the vehicles on the streets these days are used cars imported from Singapore and Thailand, where the steering wheel is on the right-hand side, as in Britain. Thus, most of the time my driver was blind to oncoming traffic as he pulled out to pass Soviet-made trucks laden with melons or foam-rubber mattresses, foul-smelling tractors and braces of oxen.

We stop along the way to buy loaves of bread, which the driver says is in short supply in Phnom Penh. (He is wrong, it turns out.) Soon the old Toyota is filled with the yeasty aroma of French-style baguettes whose preparation, a legacy of the colonial era, seems to have survived three wars in Indochina. We also stop to fill up on gasoline before reaching Cambodia, because at 900 Vietnamese dong a liter, the price works out to a bargain 80 cents a gallon, thanks to heavy government subsidies from both Moscow and Hanoi, which my driver gloomily notes will come to an end this year.

Just before the Vietnamese-Cambodian border at Boc Mai is an old railroad bridge that has been converted to road traffic by laying boards where there used to be tracks. It is a one-lane bridge, and crossing it becomes a game of chicken to see who can make it first. By the time we are halfway across, a farmer appears at the far end with two water buffaloes, which are clearly not inclined to go in reverse. After much cajoling, the farmer separates the buffaloes, and they literally squeeze by the sides of the car, breathing their loamy breath into the car as they pass.

At the end of the bridge, we find a solitary Chinese bicycle, leaning on its kickstand, blocking the way. A Vietnamese farmer lies on his side by the road’s edge, his traditional cone hat obscuring his face. Our initial concern turns to irritation as it becomes clear that the farmer is roaring drunk.

When Vietnam withdrew its last troops from Cambodia last September, it erected an enormous wooden victory arch at the border, which still delineates the frontier. The border formalities are just that--two copies each of exit customs declaration and passport control declaration to leave Vietnam, two copies each of customs declaration and passport control declaration to enter Cambodia. As we drive out of Vietnam, I notice that one of the customs men is wearing my driver’s brand-new sunglasses, and the driver is cursing mildly under his breath.

The traffic, which was heavy on the Vietnamese side of the border, evaporates in Cambodia. The landscape alternates between farmers at work in flooded rice paddies and towns whose shops have been burned out for 15 years. Commerce now consists of roadside stands--gasoline is sold by the liter in plastic soft drink bottles, and every 100 yards or so there seems to be a small pyramid of 555 brand cigarettes and Scotch whiskey.

Thanks to the grim efficiency of Khmer Rouge sappers, it still is not possible to drive all the way to Phnom Penh. The only bridge over the Mekong River, a sloping concrete span just outside the capital, was blown up before the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975. During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge tried turning the clock back 4,000 years, killing more than 1 million Cambodians in the process. Their program obviously did not include bridge repair.

So at Neak Long, Highway 1 comes to a halt at a shabby boat landing where dozens of cars and trucks await a single ferryboat that plies back and forth across the river. Neak Long enjoyed a fleeting fame when it was bombed accidentally by U.S. warplanes in the closing days of the war. As is the case with most things, it looked much better in the film “The Killing Fields,” even in its devastation, than it does in reality.

August is the height of the monsoon season and the Mekong, churning brown with silt, looks as swollen as a blocked artery and threatens to erupt its banks. The ferry boat, a mere platform with a U-shaped superstructure, bobs across the half-mile-wide river like a fisherman’s float, with the pilot deftly using the raging current to steer his craft to shore.

With a flourish, the driver bribes a soldier wearing a pea-soup-green Soviet uniform and a peaked cap to allow us to go to the head of a long line of cars. For most of the travelers, the wait is excruciatingly long. A mob of urchins descends on newly arriving cars with cooked fish on banana leaves splayed out on tin trays, plastic bags containing brown tea and fistfuls of Cambodian riels, the local currency, fanned out like canasta hands in an effort to change money.

A foreigner also attracts a large crowd of disabled war veterans, who appear to while away their days at the jetty hoping to attract the pity of travelers.

The boat handlers attempt to balance the load on the ferry to avoid capsizing, but as soon as we are in the middle of the river, a Peugeot station wagon carrying oil drums on the roof begins to slip its ropes and starts leaping into the air and slamming onto the deck as if it were dancing a tarantella. Soon we are awash to the ankles in Mekong River water, but the ferry miraculously arrives at the far side.

Once on the road again, the traveling is fairly straightforward--Route 1 is one of only two roads in the country that remain asphalted. Nonetheless, we have a flat tire in the home stretch--which has happened each of the last three times I have made the trip. The tire is easily changed, but now the driver proceeds at a snail’s pace, chastened by the knowledge that a second flat tire would strand us on a lonely stretch of road where there are no service stations and possibly guerrillas venturing out at night.

In Phnom Penh, a real surprise awaits. My driver informs me that the long-promised opening of the Cambodiana Hotel has finally taken place, nearly 18 years after the establishment was started along the banks of the Mekong near the Foreign Ministry building.

Like virtually everything else in Phnom Penh, hotels were devastated by the war. Most are fairly shabby, have no hot water and, because of power failures, no elevator service to the upper floors, a serious consideration in a country where temperatures hover around 90 degrees and the humidity around 80%. Some of the hotels are known to their frequent guests by the size of their rats.

The Cambodiana was abandoned during the war, but last year a Singapore company with the wonderfully apt name of Aggressive Hotels took over the construction and agreed to manage the place. The result is probably the largest building in Cambodia, an attractive, five-story structure laid out along the river in a manner meant to resemble a Cambodian pagoda.

The efficient Singaporeans have drilled the staff in English--”Eschoose me, sir, have a nice day”--and installed such modern conveniences as central air conditioning, hot water and in-house movies.

The dining room of the Cambodiana has become the place to be seen in Phnom Penh, with a remarkable display of wealth for a country so poor. Every night, streams of Mercedes-Benzes disgorge wealthy bureaucrats, merchants and their families, and every table in the restaurant seems crowned by a bottle of Hennessy cognac.

A sign outside the hotel’s front entrance instructs guests to check their handguns at the door. “No prostitution, drug taking or gambling,” says the list of no-nos.

The hotel offers one of only two telephones in all Cambodia that can reach the outside world (the other phone is in the hands of the Council of Ministers). Housed in a metal suitcase, the hotel phone links up to a satellite dish, and callers can speak anywhere for a mere $15 a minute.

Unfortunately, credit cards are not yet in vogue in Phnom Penh. All transactions are in cash--U.S. dollars.