life in phnom penh, cambodia
Of all the cities I have visited in Asia so far, I think Phnom Penh is my favourite. It’s dirty and it smells, and some of its inhabitants are a little bit dodgy, but it’s full of beautiful surprises. Like Sisowath Quay, by the Mekong River at dusk.
While I was in the USA on business a couple of weeks before I flew to Asia, I read First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, for the second time. In Sihanoukville, I picked up a copy of the sequel, Lucky Child. As a result, I couldn’t walk down the tree-lined boulevards and rubbish-strewn back alleys in Phnom Penh without thinking about what the city would have been like when it was completely emptied by the Khmer Rouge in April 1975.
Most of the buildings have a heavy French Colonial influence, and seeing them in a crumbling state of disrepair was a constant reminder of very recent past. The city was left to decay for four years, and by the time the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Cambodia’s economy was virtually non-existent. Much of the population was dead or dying. There were no doctors, teachers or professionals left. There had been no crops planted. People continued to starve.
Today, the country is still getting back on its feet. And like most cities, it has its enclaves of the very rich, the incredibly poor and the in-betweens. Phnom Penh is definitely not as modern as Bangkok or Saigon. And it’s noticeably poorer. But everywhere I went, its people were smiling (unlike the other two cities!). Wide and leafy boulevards, funky cafes and bars, and a young population. It’s definitely Asia’s Next Big Thing.
I hadn’t heard the best stories about the city. I’d heard that it was worse than Saigon for petty theft, and that the streets, clogged with cars and motorbikes and lawlessness, were dangerous. Leaving the bus on arrival at the bus station was a confronting, sweaty and irritating experience. But it’s those moments of travel that make a glass of wine on the roof terrace of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club, overlooking the river, or a cyclo tour around the city in the fading daylight that much sweeter.
See more photos of Phnom Penh on Flickr.
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