Cambodia's capital,
PHNOM PENH
, sprawls west from the confluence
of the Mekong and Tonlé Sap rivers.
At first glance, the city is a
confusing mess with no obvious
landmarks. The main boulevards are
choked with motos and other traffic
and lined with generic low-rise
concrete blocks, crying out for
repairs. The unsealed back streets
look identical, with only the
varying pattern of potholes and
piles of building debris to
distinguish them.
Despite initial impressions,
however, the heart of Phnom Penh,
immediately west of the river, has a
strong appeal. The French influence
is particularly evident, from the
colonial shophouses lining the
boulevards to the cheese-filled
baguettes, and here and there a
majestic Khmer building animates the
cityscape. The Phnom Penhois are
open and friendly, and the city
itself is small enough to get to
know quickly. Phnom Penh may not
have much in the way of tourist
attractions - the majority of sights
can be covered in a day or two - but
many visitors end up lingering, if
only to soak up the unique indolent
atmosphere of this neglected city.
Phnom Penh's history began
in 1372, when a local widow, Lady
Penh, stumbled across a floating
trunk containing four bronze Buddha
statues and another in stone, washed
up by the Mekong River. She saw them
as bearers of good fortune and had a
small temple built for them high
above the water level to guard
against flooding. This hill became
known as Penh's hill - Phnom Penh -
a name adopted by the town that grew
up around the site. Phnom Penh was
briefly made the capital in the
fifteenth century, sacked and
destroyed by the invading Thais in
1834, then reinstated as capital
again in 1866 under the French. The
city flourished during the Indochina
years, but the departure of the
French signalled the beginnings of
political in-fighting in Cambodia,
with Phnom Penh at the centre. Then
came the Khmer Rouge whose
experimental ideology rejected an
urban existence, and the city was
completely emptied, many of its
buildings destroyed. It wasn't until
1979 and the Vietnamese victory over
the Khmer Rouge that people began
drifting back to the devastated
city. From a low of around fifteen
thousand during the Pol Pot era, the
population now stands at around one
million.
Prosperity has also been slowly
returning, and mobile phones, land
cruisers, and glitzy karaoke joints
are much in evidence. Although not a
modern, developed capital by any
means, it's still a huge contrast to
the rest of the country, where the
majority of Khmers live a simple,
rural existence, earning an average
weekly wage of less than $5.
