Thursday, October 24, 2013

Sen Monorom Park



It's a bit of a stretch to call this a park, it's just a small triangle at the junction of Russian Federation and Monivong Boulevards. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone actually using it as a park, it's just ornamental. Previously it was the site of a rather tired-looking PTT gas station, as you can see in the middle picture that was taken during Khmer New year, in April 2010. The gas station had existed for decades, in the background you can see the Canadia Bank Tower, which had only recently been completed and was at that time the tallest structure in the city. The bottom picture shows the fencing surrounding the statue of Ganesh that was mainly carved in-situ, it was taken in December 2011. The top picture shows the park as it appears today, with the almost finished Vattanac "boot" tower behind which dwarfs the Canadia tower in the foreground, it's at least 100 meters taller. It doesn't look a lot larger in the picture, but is actually quite a bit higher. The small park does certainly look a lot prettier than it did when the service station was there, although the statue to me is rather blocky in shape and lacks the natural flow and smooth curves which most ancient Cambodian statuary has. It's still a vast improvement on the previous garage.