This afternoon, I was on my way to pick Charlotte up from school and had just crossed the sewage canal when the rear wheel of the electric moto suddenly started to slide. I pulled to the side of the road and the tire was flat. After calling Crystal and asking her to get Charlotte, I started walking the moto back to the office. This was more difficult than it sounds due to the electric moto’s security system. It locks up after about 30 seconds in idle to prevent someone from stealing it. This prevents a common form of moto theft in Phnom Penh but meant that I had to keep the electric moto in drive to keep it from locking up and had to constantly tap the accelerator to keep it moving forward.

After walking for a bit several motorists waved at me and gestured to a nearby repair shop. I had been planning to walk the moto back to the office but, in retrospect, I passed this place every day and knew it was there. So I should have just planned to walk the moto to here.

Back in the day, when I lived in Prey Veng, I had to have my moto and bike tires patched on what felt like a weekly basis. The patching was inexpensive but frustrating and disruptive. Especially when I was driving out in the countryside and had to walk to the nearest village to find someone to patch. The process was a little different this time. They use to remove the tube from the tire, submerge it in a tub of water, and look for bubbles. Then they’d apply a patch with a fire heated iron and some tar.

It turns out that the electric moto tires are tubeless. So he refilled the tire and then slowly spun it, spraying each section with water and feeling for damage. He found the hole soon enough and used a pillars to pull out a shard of metal that I thought was from a razor blade!

Then he put a string of orange adhesive over a hand drill and drilled into the tire where the metal had cut it. Spinning the drill out left the adhesive behind. Then he snipped off the extra orange stuff and topped off the tire. And that was that. Good to go. We’ll see how it affects the tire’s performance in the long term.

He charged me 5,000 Riel (about $1.25 USD) for the repair. I have no idea if that was a fair price or not, but he hesitated before he answered and looked conflicted. So I think he thought about charging me the foreigner price but then decided not to. I gave him 10,000 Riel and told him to keep the change, because I normally try to pay street level handymen and tuk tuk drivers more. They usually work hard for little income.

So that gives you an idea of what it’s like to patch a moto in Phnom Penh. It’s a bit different from a flat tire on the car back in the United States.