phnompenh

Carriage at the railway station.

2011-12-06T00:46:00.008+07:00

Toll Royal Railways have been busy refurbishing the Cambodian
rail system for the last few years.
Some old trains they have restored are on display at the Phnom Penh railway station, including this 1969 German diesel railcar and coach. Apparently there were two of these at one stage, but the other one is lying down an embankment in Battambang, after being blown up during the wars. As you can see from the pictures, it's the same model (perhaps the same train) as the one in this 1975 photograph of the Democratic Kampuchea leadership. Pol Pot is sitting in front on the left, with Nuon Chea behind. On the right are Vorn Vet and Ta Mok. At the bottom you can see the train as it was prior to restoration.

Ramshackle Houses

2011-11-30T00:33:00.002+07:00

These are a few of the more tattered-looking houses around the Chak Angre Leu area on the southern edge of the city. Some of these may have looked like normal-enough traditional abodes at one stage, but years of wear and tear, jerrybuilt repairs and extensions have left them in a rather sorry state.

An Improvement on Post Office Square.

2011-11-27T23:45:00.005+07:00

This site on the corner of Streets 102 and 13 previously had a very unremarkable and plain looking building on it. The only reason I had a picture of it at all was because a friend visiting in 2006 took a picture of the two Jeeps in front of it. The cars are still around, often parked in the same area, but the building was demolished a year or two back.

The new building that has replaced it is neo-colonial style, and could be better. One feature that stands out particularly are the curved concrete protrusions above the windows which are a little ugly in my opinion. However, it is certainly an improvement, and more in keeping with the look of the other older buildings around the square. It seems like the architects have tried to replicate most of the features of the old Post Office building opposite.

Chruoy Changva- A changing landscape.

2011-09-21T23:43:00.005+07:00

Just across the Tonle Sap River from the main body of Phnom Penh city is the Chruoy Changva peninsula. On the far side of the peninsula is the mighty Mekong river, and the tip of this peninsula is where the two huge flows meet. The Mekong has at this stage flowed for thousands of kilometers from the Himalayas on across the Tibetan plateau in China, skimming by Thailand and winding though valleys in Laos before eventually dropping down to the Cambodian plain and finally meandering all the way to the South China Sea. It is a vast body of water, and its confluence with the Tonle Sap River at this point leads to an interesting phenomenon.

The Tonle Sap River is itself a considerable force of nature, basically the overflow from the largest freshwater lake in South-East Asia. While the lake is nowadays a catchment area for many rivers and tributaries that naturally flow into it, it was once a bay. Fifty or a hundred thousand years ago, much of what is now modern Cambodia and Southern Vietnam was part of the sea. A few lonely islands stood out, but south of the Dangrek escarpment lay little more than open seas. Gradually, due to the silting action of the mighty Mekong River, which flowed over this precipace and dropped its mineral bounty onto the salty waves below, sediments were dropped, mud, sand, stones and boulders, which eventually became this country.

The edge of the peninsula is where these two majestic confluences come together. It was a popular enough location during the French era for private dwellings and factories. In the early years of the protectorate it saw a boom and by 1897 it had 15,000 inhabitants, about a third of the population of Phnom Penh at that time. The opening of the bridge linking it with the city in the early 1960s started a short-lived boom in construction and speculation.

The rivers meet here, but they don’t behave as you’d expect. Although they look to be of similar size where they meet, the Mekong has come much further, and has gained much more weight, so instead of just the usual shoving against the flow of the Tonle Sap River, before breaking off down to the Lower Mekong and leaving the Tonle Sap waters to veer west, down the Bassac channel, something different happens every year and the Mekong starts flooding the whole interior of Cambodia. This basically means that the giant Tonle Sap River changes direction at some time during the rainy season, and instead of flowing out to the sea, goes back inland and inundates vast areas with water. Millions of hectares of flooded woodland and pastures become rich breeding grounds for the freshwater fish that many locals rely upon.

During the 1970s war the bridge was destroyed and the area became a battleground. There was no development of the area until after bridge was repaired in the early 1990s, and it was very slow at first. This seems hard to believe as river-front sites in the area demand premium prices nowadays, but back then nobody wanted to live there, and it was strictly farmland.

The location itself is remarkable, in that it changes all the time. Although the central higher part generally stays the same from year to year, it’s got a point at the tip that in dry season sometimes joins up with an island with some trees on it just to the south. This island usually disappears under the waves for months now, but in the not-so-distant past this wasn’t the case. There was a pagoda built on it for many years, but it was eventually swept away in a flood. At the tip of the peninsula once stood the Phnom Penh Lighthouse, but it’s not clear what happened to this structure. The peninsula has slowly lengthened over the last century or so, and it stretches about a kilometer further south than it did in 1900. This, along with the reclamation of land on the west banks of the confluence has led to a huge amount of erosion on the facing west banks of the Mekong.

In the early part of the millennium, there were perhaps plans to make a big public park on the tip, and a huge quay was put in with a promenade and classy lighting, but it didn’t last. There was also a huge conference center that was planned, and was half-built, but got bogged down and abandoned, blotting the opposite bank of the river to such an extent that they shielded it in green wrapping in 2007, prior to being demolished. Way before that, what had seemed like a public facility or park was already blocked off, there were ways to get there through gaps in fences and across fields but it wasn’t exactly welcoming. There was an amazing model village down there, a beautiful group of stilted wooden houses, always completely deserted, sterile and useless.

Almost the whole eastern bank facing the Mekong has now been taken up by modern villas along with other private ventures. Most of these houses have at first built a concrete and brick wall around the property, and then filled this with sand to flatten and drain the area. These seem to work fine with ideal conditions but would likely fail quickly if there was a major flood or if they were undermined by currents.

Now the tip has been sold off, and there are large constructions underway there, and a “new city” is planned for the part just north of where the bridge hits the peninsula. There is a second bridge being built just north of where the current bridge is, and the whole peninsula looks like it will be unrecognizable in just a few years.

Independence Monument

2011-09-17T01:30:00.006+07:00

This iconic structure was designed by the eminent Van Mollyvann and built in the late 1950s, and inaugurated in 1961. Although it was built to commemorate Cambodia's 1953 independence from France, it has also serves as monument to the war dead. A decade ago it seemed forlorn and abandoned, but in recent years it has had something of a make-over, with new trees and fountains with colored lights added. Unfortunately it was at the same time closed to the public, and is only open for officials at ceremonies. The pictures from its early years show it being a gray concrete color rather than the laterite red we are now more familiar with. The first picture showing construction is dated 1960, but may be earlier, the second 1961, the distant shot is recent and the bottom one is a humorous Christmas card from a few years back. The first two pictures are from: http://mounyetpapyluc3.canalblog.com/

Ras Tafari in Phnom Penh.

2011-08-09T21:49:00.000+07:00

A couple of pictures of Ras Tafari, otherwise known as Haile Selaisse I, Emperor of Ethiopia, at a parade in Olympic Stadium during his visit to Cambodia in 1968.

The writing on the placards held by the crowd read "Viva His Majesty Haile Selassie I" and "Viva Cambodian-Ethiopian Friendship."

From King Father Norodom Sihanouk's archives on: http://www.norodomsihanouk.info/

Le Cercle Sportif and other pools.

2011-08-09T20:06:00.001+07:00

The Cercle Sportif was built in 1929 near to Wat Phnom on what was then Avenue Joffre. There were tennis courts as well as the large pool. Situated in the French quarter, it was enjoyed by the elite members of the protectorate and their families for many years. After independance it was re-named the Club Sportif Khmer.

On 21st April 1975, former Prime Ministers Long Boret and Sisowath Sirik Matak were executed on the grounds. It was demolished in the early part of this decade to make way for the sprawling US Embassy which was built on the site.

The Cercle Sportif in Battambang was inaugurated in 1965. It originally had an Olympic sized pool, but when it was refurbished a few years ago this was made smaller, and now the diving board is far from the water.

The Phnom Penh Sports Club (previously called the VIP Club, the current VIP club near Norodom Boulevard and the PPSC are managed by the same company) on St. 271, south of Psah Tuol Tom Pong, was formerly the residence of Marshall Lon Nol. It apparently had a large underground bunker built below it. In 1974 Khmer Rouge artillery landed close to the house, although he wasn't there at the time.

The first two pictures show the Cercle Sportif in 1929, the second two are from 1938. The color images are from 1960. the following two pictures are of the Cercle Sportif Battambang, and the color image below is the Phnom Penh Sports Club. The last picture is of the new US Embassy which was built on the site of the Phnom Penh Cercle Sportif.

The first two older pictures are from http://www.culture.fr

The following two are from. http://belleindochine.free.fr/Cambodge.htm

The 1960 pictures are from http://mounyetpapyluc3.canalblog.com/albums/au_cambodge_il_y_a_50_ans_/

The picture of Cercle Sportif Battambang is from Helen Grant Ross' study here: http://www.forum-urban-futures.net/files/Grant%20Ross_Heritage%20as%20a%20Phenomenon%20of%20Cultural%20Hiatus%20in%20the%20Battleground%20of%20Battambang.pdf

The picture of the Phnom Penh Sports Club is from http://tumnei.wordpress.com/

Olympic Stadium 1964

2011-08-05T23:58:00.000+07:00

Here are a couple of amazing pictures of the stadium from the air, around the time the construction was completed. I haven't posted anything for a few months because at first I couldn't access the blog, and then when I could I found I'd forgotten the log in details. Anyway, loads more to come, hope you haven't lost interest in the meantime.

Scummy Street Market Near Olympic.

2011-03-03T12:46:00.001+07:00

This was a creepy-looking place, even in the day. I lived nearby for a while, but always avoided it. At night time it looked like something out of a grey Dickensian nightmare, hovels and slime and rats abounding. Soon after the picture of the grumpy-looking seller was taken, in February 2009, the municipality moved the market to a new location. The picture is of one of the nicer areas of the market, there don’t seem to be any greasy shacks with gizzards hanging off them nearby. A friend took it, as I didn’t go there.It was on St.318, a couple of streets south of Olympic market.

The new market was built over the rather polluted drainage canal that runs south from the smelly pond at the southeast corner of Olympic Stadium. There are a couple of pictures from when it was being constructed in early 2009, and one of it in business in November 2010. It's on St. 310, near the huge Chinese school.

Phnom Penh Pachyderms

2011-02-18T11:50:00.000+07:00

There aren’t a lot of elephants around Phnom Penh these days, in fact there is just the one sole and perhaps lonely Sambo, who gives rides around Wat Phnom and sleeps in an empty field in the Tonle Bassac area, behind the new Australian embassy. She was also a common sight on her way to and from work along Sisowath Quay for years, until some recent decision forced Sambo’s mahout to take her on a different route, along street 19 behind the royal palace. So that’s it as far as elephants go for a few hundred kilometers. There is of course the excellent Phnom Tamao wildlife refuge/zoo, about 70 km south of the capital in Takeo province, which houses quite a few pachyderms, but outside of there you won’t find many till you hit mountains and wilderness.
Back a century or so ago, things were quite different. Elephants were commonly used as draught animals or to transport goods or passengers. There were elephant taxis around Phnom Penh, and the palace maintained a large retinue of the beasts. These were used in ceremonies, and especially auspicious were the white elephants which the king would keep as his own personal sort of talisman. These animals are not really white, but have pink or light-colored patches that give them their name. The palace white elephants were often taken away as booty after wars with neighboring emergent states. The part of the Royal Palace that tourists exit from these days is where the elephant stables once stood. Along the front of the palace you can still see the small pavilions where elephants were posted up until the late 1960s. Now there are just ceremonial guards and empty spaces.
There are still some very limited numbers of wild elephants in Cambodia, but it’s very hard to say how many. In the north eastern highlands of Mondulkiri and Rattanakiri they are still used as beasts of burden or for tourist rides. Some also exist in the Cardamom mountains in Koh Kong and Kampong Speu and perhaps neighboring provinces, but there are no clear figures.
The decline in this animal’s numbers is due to many factors, but disappearing habitat must be the main one. The animal is generally held in reverence by local people and poaching would not seem to be a major problem, however snares set for other animals often cause major damage to their legs. Landmines do of course also take their toll. Obviously a huge, lumbering creature like this can easily die as a result of an injury to any limb because of incapacitation or infection.
During the Pol Pot regime, these animals lost their status and many were slaughtered, for meat and more importantly their bones which were exported to China. The details of just a couple of shipments of agricultural and wildlife products, taken from David Chandler’s well researched and documented book “The Pol Pot Regime” gives a small glimpse of the scale this trade perhaps had.
On 14 March (1977), the Chinese ship Heng Shan left for Whampoa with one thousand tons of Cambodian raw rubber and forty-four tons of betel, ten tons of lotus seeds, and other plant matter. But the Heng Shan also carried an extraordinary eighteen tons of deer horn, seven tons of pangolin scales, and two tons of tortoiseshell. One hesitates to compute the number of carcasses contributing to this cargo. Many more made up a 22 May shipment to the China National Native Products and Animal By-Products Import and Export Corporation. Dispatched to Whampoa on the Xindu were over six tons of monkey bone, 1.5 tons of elephant bone, “24,760 pieces” of dried gecko (apparently individual animals, weighing over half a ton in all), a ton of snake skins (mostly python), along with 145 kg of panther and tiger skins, 73 kg of black bear skins, and 128 kg of ring-mark lizard.
The Xindu also carried nearly 1000 tons of raw rubber, plus 160 tons of green beans, 130 tons of kapok, 65 tons of strychnine, 30 tons of white sesame, 20 tons of betel, 15 tons of pepper, 5 tons of malvanut, and 2 tons of frangipani flower.
One and a half tons of elephant bone in one shipment, perhaps the bones of more than ten animals. Obviously they had some use in traditional Chinese medicine, and perhaps that has something to do with the continuing decline in this incredible animal’s numbers. Otherwise it’s just that the forests which covered something like 70 percent of the country less than a century ago have in the main disappeared, a huge proportion just in the last 20 years. It’s difficult to see how such a large animal can survive alongside humans as less land becomes available for foraging and conflicts start to arise with farmers.

Boueng Japun

2011-02-12T12:31:00.002+07:00

This place is almost unknown to many of the foreign residents who spend much of their time in the central districts, yet is bigger than a few of those districts put together. It stretches south from the dike at Street 271 for a long, long way, there’s little solid till you hit Takmao City. In recent reports about its development a figure of over 3000 hectares has been thrown about, and I don’t doubt it. The part that has been filled in so far is miniscule in comparison, perhaps 10 hectares or less. It’s the natural direction for the city to expand in anyway, and so long as provisions are made for drainage things could go well. The eminent architect Van Molyvann has argued that this is the direction the city should move in for many years. This has to be partly because of water resources, which become extremely scarce as on moves west of the city, and are almost non-existent when one reaches Kampong Speu province.

Boueng means lake in the Khmer language, but most of the area only appears to be a lake at the wettest times of the year. There is a permanently flooded part, but the rest is either swampy, or firmly above water for much of the year. Otherwise, every inch of it is divided into lots, which are used to grow various crops, water-hyacinths, morning-glory and other plants that are sold as pig-feed. These are plants which are also sold for human consumption, but not the ones from here. The reason for this is that the water is considered dirty, as the lake is fed by the some of the many polluted canals that flow south from the center city. Street 271 is the city’s southern dike, as well as being a ring-road, so much of the excess water that floods the city at times ends up being pumped over this barrier. Boueng Trabek Pumping Station is most easily noticed, it’s not far from where street 271 starts near the Monivong Bridge and the bottom of Monivong Boulevard.

On the city side of the dike is Boueng Trabek, it and the wide canals that stretch from it are particularly foul, with grey water and garbage floating on top. I’m not at all clear about what the pumping station does, but it certainly seems to filter out a lot of the floating detritus. It also seems to treat the water in some way, as it doesn’t smell so bad once it gets pushed over the dike, and it has a lot of foam which would seem to indicate the use of chemicals or detergents.

Besides the dirty water flowing into it, there is a fair amount of garbage strewn around the edges. Some of this comes from the local residents who throw a lot of trash straight out their windows, and the rest just blows down from the main road. What is quite surprising is that the lake seems to be quite clean once you get away from the perimeter. By the time you get a hundred meters from the road it’s difficult to notice any real pollution, it’s just the usual vast expanse of open ground you see in the central part of the country, extending as far as the eye can see. Eventually the water gets across this expanse, and flows into the Tonle Bassac River and onwards into the Mekong Delta and then out into the South China Sea.

What I find most interesting about this particular place is how much of a divide that exists there. Street 271 has many businesses along it, from small workshops to corporate headquarters, either way it’s a busy place and very much part of the city. Within a few meters one starts to find a very different place, where impoverished peasants try to eke out a living growing weeds. Paddling along minuscule canals in tiny boats, they exist in a completely different universe than most of the fat city’s inhabitants, just doing what they have been doing for hundreds of years.

Little is known publicly about the planned development here, and the nearby residents have not been informed about what is happening, although many are quite aware that they will probably soon have to leave, with little if any compensation.

The wetlands support a major amount of wildlife, from Egrets to Bee-Eaters and Barbets, but is hardly unique in this, similar areas exist all over the country. The main problem really is drainage, and this particular basin serves half or more of the capital, so unless proper channels are built the end results could be disastrous for the southern part of the city. The houses on the perimeter of the lake are stilted, but at the height of the monsoon the lower floors sometimes flood. It remains to be seen how much difference the newly filled-in part will make, but with less drainage it seems inevitable that it will result in higher water and more flooding than we have previously seen in the area.

As an update (October 2011) it has been announced that the eastern part of the wetland which is being reclaimed is for a boulevard which will stretch between the southern end of Monivong Boulevard for seven kilometers to Takhmau. It will apparently be 60 meters wide. It has also been announced that the rest of the wetland will be preserved.

The first picture was taken by Serge Corrieras in 1991, the following is what may be the same place in 2010, with a new pumping station built.
One stitched together image shows the sand filling in the east part of lake.
The picture of the woman who has been harvesting plants in the boat is from 2006, you can there isn't any sand in the background.
The yellow part on the map shows approximately how much of the wetland has been filled so far.

Posters

2011-02-09T17:07:00.001+07:00

Boueng Kak

2011-01-27T11:21:00.000+07:00

This was never my favorite place in Phnom Penh, but nevertheless had a pleasant and unique side to it. The street outside was a higgledy-piggledy track, unpaved until relatively recently, and it looked unlike anything else in the city. Of course it bore a resemblance to some of the side streets in poorer outlying areas, but it had loads of shops and restaurants with backpacker themes and English language signage, and an unhealthy proportion of foreigners too. Locals generally avoid the place like the plague, and it’s hardly surprising as just wandering through the streets will draw many unwanted offers of ganja, yamma or smack from the charming, salt-of-the-earth types who hang around there. There are of course many other little streets around the lake that aren’t frequented by backpackers, just normal poor neighborhoods.

When you were sitting on one of the verandahs looking out onto the lake, with the best sunsets in the city, you forgot all the sleazy dealers outside, and it was one of the most relaxing and quiet places to be in this busy town. You couldn’t hear the traffic way up on Monivong, and it was like you were in the provinces. There were fishermen and pig-weed collectors out in boats, a pagoda was just visible far across the lake to the west, the same pagoda Prime Minister Hun Sen stayed in as a student.

Back in the 1960s there was a park here, and also a restaurant on the island in the middle. The restaurant was connected by a bridge to the land to the south. I’m not exactly sure how this was accessed as it would seem to lead to a railway yard. The park, to the north, was still a popular spot in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was located behind the French Embassy compound, and had a small funfair with a hand driven Ferris wheel. Like many parts of the city, which had during the People’s Republic of Kampuchea period been able to exert a certain amount of control on settlements, the whole area became a shanty town during the next decade. The lake was no longer such a pleasant place to visit, and the water itself became foul and polluted, especially close to shore.

The guesthouses that later sprung up around street 93 had nice jetties but the places themselves were dumps, mostly jerry-built wooden platforms with crap paneled rooms, and one stinking bathroom out near the street for the whole place. I had some good times there, but I never stayed. No big deal, except that you had to get through one of the dodgiest streets in the whole city before you got to the relative safety of Monivong.

A deal went through a few years back, and somehow a private company got the rights to develop the whole lake and much of the surrounding land, which meant filling it in for a start, and moving the residents, who were offered various incentives such as an apartment in an outlying district, various sums of money between five and eight thousand dollars, or nothing at all. Many people haven’t moved, but the conditions due to flooding and general uncertainty have driven many residents out already.

The growing sand bank in the middle comes piped in a slurry from a floating plant just south of Chruoy Changva peninsula’s southern tip, at the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sar rivers. It’s growing like a big lollipop, and it’s far higher than the decks of the back-packer bars nearby, so it blocks out any view there used to be. One bar owner down the southern end complained that now thieves could just walk across a beach to nick his stereo, which they had just done, while before they would have needed a boat.

Flooding in the condemned villages has become a major problem since the filling in began, as it blocked up sewage piping, but also seems to have contributed to unprecedented levels and periods of flooding in adjoining areas in Russei Keo district. Filling in lakes is nothing new in Phnom Penh; in fact most of city was built on lakes and wetland. However, at over a hundred hectares, Boueng Kak must have had a huge volume as a catchment area for storm-water. As more lakes, wetland or even open ground become lost to construction and paving, there is less possibility that the earth can absorb water, so it runs off into already overloaded or incapable drain systems. It’s not exactly ideal to have street-water and other effluent draining off into a pond or lake in a city either, as these still bodies of water rapidly become septic cesspools. The “O” in O Russei means stream, and it indeed once was a beautiful, bamboo brook. The “Stung” in Stung Meanchey also means a stream. Luckily now most of the O Russei stream is like the River Fleet in London, or the River Styx to Hell, underground, as it stinks to high hell. The river at Stung Meanchey is unfortunately still open air. Most of the time it is a smelly, muddy, grotty and gray pathetically small-looking flow that makes you hold your breath or gag as you cross the bridge. It gets to rip a bit when there’s a storm, and it gets washed out a little, but the smell never goes away.

The future plans for the lake area are far from certain, as some rough maps and 3D plans have been shown to the public, but little information has been forthcoming from the company involved. With many of the bigger constructions around town either moving at a snail’s pace, or grinding to a halt, it would seem unwise to attempt another similar complex which there is at the current time a very limited market for.

Early projections showed a proportion of lake that was to be kept, but the method being used to fill it in would seem to make that very impractical, so I imagine they just plan to install a few shallow pond water features around the development. Otherwise it’s just the regular mixture of office blocks, skyscrapers, malls and residential units that keep magically appearing.

The color pictures of the people playing near the waterside and children playing on rides are by Jacques Baekaert, and are from around 1991. The grainy black and white photo of a Ferris-wheel and a cow grazing are from around 1993. There are a couple of stitched together panoramas I took in April 2010, when the fill was beginning to make its presence felt and little water remained in the southern end of the former lake. The aerial shot is from sometime shortly before the lake began to get filled in.

1925 Urbanisation Plan

2011-01-12T17:02:00.000+07:00

With Phnom Penh undergoing so many rapid changes in the current period, with many improvements but sometimes what seems like a huge lack of forward planning and imagination, but then it’s a lot easier to have grand plans when the area is semi-rural.

Back in the 1920s the city was tiny in comparison to now, places like Mao Tse Tung Boulevard were swamps on the far outskirts of town. Psah Thmei had yet to be built, and west of that was still farmland or lake.

Boueng Keng Kang was still an actual lake then, rather than a name for a very plush neighborhood. You can see how it straddled what is now Monivong, just south of the now Sihanouk. The map seems to mention filling in on the east side, and much of the water appears to be actually to the west of what was later Monivong.

You can see the canal in the location of the current Hun Sen Park, and the pond in front of Wat Botum, and although both were kept in this plan, neither would be around for much longer.

The grey lines on the plan indicate existing structures, in a very basic way. The central part of town has some more definite blocks shown in black. It’s amazing to see neighborhoods so specifically zoned off by ethnicity, you can see a European quarter in the north of the city, a Chinese one just below it, then a Khmer neighborhood, and finally, just south west, an Annamite or Vietnamese quarter. There are three Annamite pagodas visible in the nearby area, one looks to be at or near the site of the current Wat Sampao Meas, another was on the site of the future Borei Keila. Just across the road from the stadium is the “Terrain d’Aviation,” perhaps the edges of the airport reached to here in 1925, now it’s about 5 km west.

The red lines show the ambitious plans for the city, most of which got no further than being plans. The sweeping curves planned for the approach roads from the west just don’t exist in the modern area, just grids. There are some huge parks marked out at the edge of Boueng Kak Lake and on the Chrouy Changva peninsula, both predictably close to the areas most populated by Europeans.

You can see a planned bridge at the end of 106/108 St linking with the peninsula, while the canal has been left far to the north where the current Chruoy Changva Bridge is. An industrial area and port was planned for the Mekong side of the peninsula. This idea was still being considered in the late 1950s, but finally the decision was made to dredge a channel for the port on the Tonle Sap that we have today, with the semi-industrial neighborhood of Russei Keo nearby.

An added bonus to this was the creation of about 100 hectares of reclaimed land for what became the Tonle Bassac neighborhood. The Phnom Penh Center, Naga Casino, National Assembly, Buddhist Institute and Australian Embassy all stand on ground that the 1925 planners couldn’t envisage.

Many of the plans seem to have become real, Monivong Boulevard does actually stretch south of Sihanouk now, and the train station is close to where they intended it to be, and a few other features seem to have come to life. It’s a shame none of the parks ever came to much, that’s one thing the city just hasn’t got. There are plenty of well maintained-large spaces between busy avenues, but they are nothing like the huge parks you can roam and forget about city life in that you find in most cities.

I’ve included a map at the same scale of the city in 1973, at the same scale just for comparison. There's a picture of a leafy lane, a road along the Bassac river in the early 1900s, and an aerial view of the city before any of the plans came about.

The Nicest House in Cambodia.

2011-01-03T17:03:00.001+07:00

I’m sure many residents and visitors have noticed this fairy-tale style abode just off the main road on the east side of the Chrouy Changva Bridge. Far enough away from national route 6A to have avoided the recent widening of the road, it sits in a swamp, sometimes completely cut off by floodwaters. It’s one of the last rural scenes anyone will see before they hit the bridge and the big smoke beyond. It’s unusually ornate for a Cambodian house, but I have seen similarly painted homes.

As an update (October 2011) I should mention that this house no longer exists, it was demolished to build the connecting road for the new bridge. On the site are now a few workers huts, and the wetland is also due to be developed.

Borei Keila

2010-12-22T16:59:00.001+07:00

Not many people stop to wonder about the meaning of place names, some are easy enough to figure out, like Tuol Svay Prey, hill of the mango forest. I never even thought about the name Borei Keila until recently. Nearby is Bak Touk high school, Bak Touk was one of the few original Khmer villages that were in the vicinity of the capital as it first developed. Borei Keila became the local name for a whole run-down neighborhood of dilapidated 60s era apartment blocks, not unlike the Tonle Bassac buildings to the south.
Keila means sports in Khmer, and Borei has various meanings, city, town, urban, populated or center, in this instance center is probably most appropriate, so Borei Keila means Sports Center. From an older, 1920s map we can see that there had been a Pagode Annamite, or Vietnamese Temple at the same location.
The apartment complex was built as a sort of Olympic village, with an athletic track on the grounds at the same time as the nearby stadium was developed on old sports grounds. Because the Asian sports event the stadium was originally built for was cancelled the complex never got used for its planned purpose. I don’t know what happened to it in the period after that, I’d imagine that like the Tonle Bassac buildings it was rented out to badly-paid civil servants. In the 1980s the area became important as the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Health, Prime Minister’s Office, Council of Ministers Building and various other government facilities were located nearby. One of the blocks within the estate became the State Secretariat for Women’s Affairs building for a time.
Many of the blocks were used to house police, soldiers and other officials on the lower end of the pay scales. Decoration wasn’t always a high priority, especially while most residents were struggling and probably trying their best not to stand out. The blocks ended up looking pretty rough, with crazy amateur brickwork extensions, wires and pipes poking out all over the place and a nice tropical coating of moss and plants. It has to be said that it was one of the less attractive areas around town a few years back.
It’s pretty much all changed now, but it’s been slow. Many of the residents of the old decaying blocks signed up to a deal where they got an apartment in one of the new blocks being erected. The new buildings are very much the standard Chinese shop-house style, if a bit higher than usual. This type of building usually has individual entrances rather than the long balconies and hallways common in some older developments, so security is generally better. There was some controversy around the redevelopment of the area and some of the less-fortunate residents ended up relocated to extremely bad conditions on the far outskirts of the city. Apparently their conditions have improved somewhat since an NGO got involved in the situation.
Nowadays, as well as the new residential units there is a new Ministry of Tourism headquarters on the site, along with a new university campus and many other commercial premises. There is a new huge Council of Ministers building nearby, along with the equally grand new Prime minister’s office. Between these new buildings and the recently refurbished Ministry of Defense still lie a few of the decrepit old blocks that used to be common in the area, I wouldn’t imagine they’ll be around for too much longer.

The first picture shows some of the remaining buildings from the old development, the next is a map from 1928 and the last a map from the early 1970s.

Bokor Post Office

2010-12-20T16:36:00.001+07:00

This was a strange-looking stilted structure; it had an arched concrete roof, with a sort of false angular eave built above it with brick. A footbridge connected it with the nearby road. There was extensive damage to the rear of it, there had been a lot of fighting on the plateau in 1979, and this building was the most obviously war-damaged. Many stories tell of a battle between Vietnamese/Salvation Front soldiers fighting Pol Pot troops who had taken refuge in the church. The post office was directly in the firing line, and most of the back wall was knocked out by a mortar round.
There are conflicting reports on the damage to all the buildings on the plateau, which have all been stripped completely bare, with channels cut out to scavenge copper electrical conduits and almost all woodwork gone. As per usual, this gets blamed on the “Khmer Rouge,” as is almost anything that looks old and broken. Although the combined Vietnamese and Salvation Front managed to wrest the plateau from Pol Pot’s forces in 1979, in later years the Kampot area became a hot-bed for resistance forces and Bokor changed hands many times.
One ex-resistance fighter who lived in the area from the late 1970s till recent times claimed in an interview that the hill-station was preserved in good condition during the Pol Pot regime, and it was only later that Vietnamese troops who were stationed there scavenged everything. Blaming the other side is par for the course but it doesn’t really matter, war tends to destroy everything anyway, whether by direct damage or the poverty and desperation that inevitably follows.
In the early 1970s, as the area became caught up in the war, and B52 strikes were pounding coastal parts of Kampot, the resort was abandoned again. The manager of the Bokor Palace Hotel had enough foresight to see what was about to happen, and took the entire contents of the hotel’s wine cellar down the hill to nearby Kep, where he hid it. He returned from exile more than twenty years later, in 1993, and recovered the untouched wine from the stash-place, and managed to sell some for a good price.
Anyway, back to the post office. It was recently demolished, along with a few other buildings up on the hill. The developers claimed that it was in a very dangerous state, which seems reasonable enough as it was one of the more wrecked structures. The Bokor Palace Hotel/Casino itself is due to be refurbished, good news as there was an initial period when it wasn’t clear whether it would be kept or not.

Expatriates

2010-12-19T13:03:00.000+07:00

Cambodia has seen many influxes of foreigners over its long history. Traders from India visited early on and their influence carries through to this day. Malays and Chams, and of course the Vietnamese and Thais who gradually migrated south made their marks too. Chinese have been moving steadily to the region for hundreds of years too, while various groups of hill tribes have drifted down, in many cases relatively recently.

The first foreigners from the west to arrive in Cambodia turned up in the late 1500s. Hailing from Portugal and later Spain, they were a mixed bunch of missionaries and freebooters who made their presence known very quickly. One particularly notorious pair almost managed to convert the Cambodian King to Christianity, but when he was deposed they followed him up to Laos, and after raising an army they fought their way back into Cambodia and got rid of the usurper. There is an excellent book written by a Jesuit Priest that goes into detail on this, but all didn’t go well in the end for the Europeans. After a period of calm when they were able to establish their own quarter in Phnom Penh, but after some problems with the Malay residents, who were made up largely of mercenaries employed by the King, they were all slaughtered one night and their houses were burnt to the ground. There were also later English arrivals who settled near the court which was then at Oudong.

A small community of Portuguese-Khmers remained in Phnom Penh, in an area of what is now part of Russei Keo district by national route 5. Although many of these had converted to Christianity, they took on local habits and assimilated to such an extent that they became virtually indistinguishable from any other inhabitants. Portuguese family names were common enough till at least the 1950s, and it seems that European features are visible in some locals, but this may be coincidence.

It wasn’t till almost three centuries later that the next large bunch of Europeans turned up, this time French. In the early years most of the colonists were a rough crew, it was a tough posting in a hot country ravaged by tropical diseases, and in the main only the desperate turned up. Many of them took up with local wives and lifestyles, and their “going native” became an issue for later French administrations. However, as the administration expanded, many of these malcontents who had in many cases been struggling for years found lucrative posts.

In the years that followed, long after the ground work had been done by these “desperados,” it was married, respectable and wholesome people who were more likely to be found manning the higher posts in the protectorate.

After independence, many French people stayed on in Cambodia, and they have a huge if quiet presence these days too. The first few years of post-independence Cambodia were boom years, and with various aid projects underway and a free atmosphere, the place was popular and many foreigners enjoyed living here. This wasn’t to last long, and afterwards a period of stagnation saw many small businesses closing and many foreign residents leaving.

After the 1970 coup and the war which started to kick in straight afterwards, a lively crowd of advisors, journalists and aid workers moved to Phnom Penh. Most accounts tell of a heady, surreal atmosphere where despite there being a war just outside the city boundaries, many wined and dined and had a good time while the country burned. All remaining foreigners were rounded up and expelled via the Thai border after Pol Pot’s forces took Phnom Penh in April 1975. Francois Bizot, a French archaeologist helped round up some of the stragglers. In his book “The Gate”, he tells of one amazing incident where a couple of French Academics working at the University of Phnom Penh refused to listen to his advice. They were Marxists, and had decided to stay and help the revolution, and had already donned black pajamas and red kramas for this impending role. Two days later they were picked up by combatants and dumped at the embassy. A Scottish surgeon was so annoyed by their clothing that he decked one of them and told them to change clothes, which they did.

There are some stories about U.S. soldiers who went AWOL and one McKenzie Phillips did settle in Cambodia with his local wife back in the early 1970s. He was apparently very popular in the village as he wasn’t work shy. Unfortunately the Khmer Rouge didn’t share this enthusiasm and he was later executed. The sole westerner known of who did live in Cambodia in the late 1970s is Laurent Piq. A Frenchwoman who married a Cambodian scholar in Paris in the late 1960s, she made her way to Cambodia after the revolution, where her husband was now a high ranking political cadre. She received little in the way of favor, had a miserable time, and eventually had to flee across the Thai border as a refugee.

After the fall of the Pol Pot regime, a very small number of aid staff was allowed to move to Phnom Penh, were most were quartered in the Samaki Hotel, now renamed Le Royal, and their movements were strictly controlled. It wasn’t really till UNTAC hit town in 1991 that large numbers of foreigners turned up again. Obviously the first were military guys and officials but many NGO workers, journalists and increasing numbers of private businessmen too. The Lido was a popular bar with legionnaires, and unwelcome faces were often unceremoniously thrown off the balcony. Nowadays it is the location of rather safer Sharky Bar.

Some of these characters from UNTAC time stayed or later returned here, but they are rare to come by. Many more people rolled up on these shores as the 1990s progressed, and obviously with a dusty, crazy town these weren’t always the most wholesome types. With the surrender of the remnants of Pol Pot’s army in early 1999, peace finally returned and since then the whole country has changed immensely. In recent years many of the foreigners deciding to stay perhaps seem more well-heeled and sophisticated than before. Echoing the situation with the later French arrivals in the 19^th century, the groundwork was already done for them. If the going got tough, I’d imagine most would get going sharpish, leaving behind a few oddballs and maniacs who wouldn’t know where else to go anyway.

The top picture is the "Fete De Club Nautique" in Phnom Penh, 1955. The second was I think actually taken in Laos in 1955, I had to post it for the dodgy expressions on the foreigners. The third picture shows a mixed bunch of foreigners displaying cultural insensitivity on an early version of "Pontoon." The last is someone waterskiing in front of the Royal Palace.

Statues

2010-12-17T16:40:00.000+07:00

A few strange looking statues I've seen around, the first is at the pagoda near the Tonle Bati ruins, showing mythical figures riding on Chinese zodiac animals. The second is a Neak Ta or guardian spirit that in this case looks like a monkey, on Oudong mountain. the third is a semi-naked woman and a bear or something at a restaurant near Takeo city, and the last is an old man getting chased up a tree, again near Tonle Bati. There's a story behind this one but unfortunately I don't know it.

Olympic Market - 1979 and 2010.

2010-11-30T17:38:00.001+07:00

Just south-west of the stadium across Sihanouk Boulevard is one of the city’s largest covered markets. The pictures from 1979 show a huge open area, with a red-tiled covered market covering a fraction of the modern unit. I grabbed these from the 1979 John Pilger documentary “Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia. Much of the footage used in this film came from a slightly-earlier East German documentary “Kampuchea- Death and Rebirth,” which was the first film made after the intervention in January of that year which ousted the Pol Pot government. Much of the city was abandoned and deserted at that time, it was a brief period though, and life quickly returned to the capital. One local man described it back in the early 1980s as looking similar to the current Tuol Tom Pong market, as in a series of shack-style stalls with corrugated metal or tarpaulin roofing. Since then a huge concrete building has been built in the central area.
The first of new pictures shows a general front view of the market. You can see how the gas station and stalls behind it use the same sort of central reservation that is visible in the old pictures. The modern building covers the area bordered in the old pictures by trees and vegetation, none of the asphalted areas seem to have changed. The next new picture shows a couple of innocuous-looking corner houses, you can see that they are the same structures as those near the upper right corner of the market in the old pictures. The Olympic flame sign can be seen in the close up of the rather utilitarian-looking front of this market. The last picture shows the southern-side of the building with its interesting ribbed-roof. None of the shop-houses on the opposite side of that street appear to be more than a few years old, but the distant ones might be the same as those in the 1979 view. In one of the 1979 shots you can see the open ground around the nearby stadium in the background, it's mostly enclosed by buildings now.

The Best and the Worst

2010-11-26T14:02:00.001+07:00

I don’t mean to criticize either of these establishments in any way, I’m sure they try hard in the difficult field of junior education. The first is next to Wat Tuol Tom Pong, and its location, above a metal-works, seems far from ideal. This small factory produces cement-mixers, small cranes and other pieces of relatively heavy machinery. Seven days a week the noise from the angle-grinders, welders and hammering can be heard throughout the neighborhood, it’s hard to imagine what it might sound like from the floor above, perhaps they have industrial strength sound-proofing. The other school pictured, which has just had a makeover, is on Nehru Boulevard (Street 215), in the Psah Depo area, I have always had to admire its ambitious moniker.

Olympic Stadium Part II

2010-11-22T19:41:00.000+07:00

I wrote a bit about this place before, not much has changed about the place since but the northern and eastern perimeters, which were for years used by various businesses ranging from newsstands to coach stations, with plenty of motorbike spares outlets and shoe stalls in between, have recently been moved on , and it’s quite surprising to see how much space has been freed, quite a few hectares. The space is being cleared for an Olympic Committee Center, which hopefully could be the start of a concerted effort to tidy up the whole facility, which has seen little real progress in years although it is relatively well-maintained.
There’s a comparison between the view in 2005 and 2010, and you can see a fair amount of construction went up in that time. What isn’t obvious is that some of those buildings actually took years to put up, and there were long periods when the whole project was abandoned, however now it’s a fairly popular mall and car-park. The company that developed the land on the west of the stadium entered an agreement with the then FUNCINPEC-controlled ministry that ran the place. They were supposed to refurbish the stadium and grounds, but did little other than a white-wash, and their construction projects were stopped for quite some time because of this. I'm not clear on the exact details, if anyone knows better I'd like to hear.
The other pictures are from 1975, I knew the stadium had been used as a military base, but I didn’t know it was also used as a helicopter base. The pilots actually designated the place themselves, as there was huge confusion in the last period of the war, and their normal base at Pochentong had become unusable due to rocket and artillery attacks. The last of the helicopters based there headed off at 2 am on April 17th to Kampong Chhnang, they reported that several others were left behind so these would be the ones in the admittedly low-quality pictures.
There’s also a frame-grab of a voting station at the stadium for the 1993 UNTAC sponsored elections.

The first picture was taken by Tom Monorom whose other pictures and writing can be seen here: http://tommickx.wordpress.com/

Bon Om Tuk / Water Festival

2010-11-19T16:06:00.000+07:00

This is the busiest festival in the calendar for Cambodia, and starts again tomorrow. The other main festivals generally involve dispersal of city and town dwellers to their ancestral villages, so although the celebrations may be larger, they aren’t so obvious because they are spread out. This is more about rural people coming to town, and huge numbers get concentrated around some spots, making it difficult at times to get around. The festival is usually very friendly and pleasant, although the aimless nature to some of it creates a strange atmosphere at times.

The first couple of pictures are from sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century, the following two black & white images with the steamer on the river are from 1930 and 1932. The following four color photos of the racing boat, crowds and strange looking naval craft are from 1955. The next color picture of the boat race is from 1960, I'm not sure where it was taken, but it doesn't look like Phnom Penh. The second last picture with the UNTAC ship by the quay is by Serge Corrieras and was taken in 1991. The last picture shows some crowds on the quay in 2006.

Chruoy Changva Bridge

2010-11-14T17:35:00.000+07:00

In 1966, the Sangkum Reah Niyum Bridge, later renamed the Cambodia-Japan Friendship Bridge, was built with funds provided by Japan.I've only ever heard foreigners refer to it as "The Japanese Bridge," somewhat of a misnomer as there are a huge number of Japanese bridges all over the country. It is known locally as Chruoy Changva Bridge because it links the city with the peninsula of that name, and leads on to National route 6, which can take you to Siem Reap or Kampong Cham and the Northeast.
It was mined twice in 1973, apparently by North Vietnamese sappers, and eventually destroyed, its two middle spans dropping into the Tonle Sap river below. It was eventually repaired in the early 1990s, again with Japanese funding.
The first picture shows the bridge in the late 60swhen first built, and the following was taken sometime in the mid 70s, it shows a ferry operating from the base of the destroyed structure.This is the spot where American journalists Sydney Schanberg and local journalist Dith Pran among others were held after being captured shortly after the city fell on April 17^th 1975 to Khmer Rouge forces. The scene was later recreated in the 1984 Roland Joffe movie “The Killing Fields,” although the movie was actually shot in neighboring Thailand.
The third and fourth show the bridge around 1991, you can see a UN ship parked on the quay and the water festival boat races going on in the foreground. It is also interesting to see warehouses and buildings on the river side of Sisowath Quay, where now there is just park. This picture and the following was taken by Serge Corrieras.
The final picture shows the newly repaired bridge in around 1993.

Bokor

2010-11-01T14:18:00.001+07:00

A bit of a detour from Phnom Penh, about 200 kilometers in fact, is Bokor mountain, probably my favorite place in the country. Its name comes from the mountain’s similarity to the hump of a cow. At its best vantage points there is a steep cliff hundreds of meters high which ends in the lush and noisy canopy of a vast rainforest which stretches another ten kilometers or so, almost to the coast. In this relatively flat country it is quite remarkable.
The plateau at the top of the mountain has no history of human habitation, due to its inaccessibility. There are hill-tribes that exist in the immediate vicinity, but on lower elevations. French explorers reached the plateau around 1912, and it was decided not too long afterwards to build a hill-station there. To those unfamiliar with the concept, a hill-station was a facility built by colonial authorities on hills, with resorts, hospitals and hotels available to those who needed respite from the insufferably hot plains below.
The road to the mountain winds more than forty kilometers around the edges of little hills, culverts, ravines and bridges in dense jungle at first, but later evens out towards the top. This was built with corvée labor, which was the French administration’s attempt to collect taxes from people who couldn’t pay them, by forcing them into civil engineering projects. In this particular project many of the laborers would have been Vietnamese prisoners from nearby colonies, rather than locals, however this doesn’t excuse the huge death-toll amongst workers. Some estimate that as many as 20,000 people died on the construction of the road.
Eventually the road was finished, and development gradually took off. There was a “marie” or mayor’s office, a hospital, a church, a post-office and some hotels which at times in their history served as casinos, along with a few private residences in the surrounding area. There were also huge farms on the plateau experimenting with and growing different temperate vegetables for the resort, and of course many new villages to house all the local staff and farmers. The area became embroiled in war in the late 1940s and the resort was evacuated, but rebuilt in the late 1950s after independence. It again became cut off by fighting in the very early 1970s, and was off-limits to visitors for the best part of the next three decades. There was fierce fighting on the mountain after the 1979 Vietnamese led intervention, and for many of the following 20 years the area was fought over, changing hands from government held to DK held and back again innumerable times. Very little of this is apparent now, there are just a few concrete shells of buildings and weeds, some bullet holes and blown-up corners on otherwise sound looking structures, and until recently at least, a skeleton of a anti-aircraft gun emplacement on one of the hills. Of course it’s being developed now, I’ll write more on that later.
The big picture with the Volkswagen campers in the foreground is from I’d guess the early 1960’s, and is my favorite picture of the Bokor Palace Hotel. It also proves that scratching graffiti over any suitable surface is not a new phenomenon up there.
Most of the other pictures are visual comparisons I made between various buildings as they looked in 2005 and how they appeared in the 1968 movie “Rose de Bokor”. At the time I couldn’t find many old pictures of the area, so they are low-res frame grabs rather than the clearer images I’d have preferred. Some of the other pictures were taken at night on long exposures, and were artificially lit with a mag-lite.

Cattle

2010-10-30T12:35:00.000+07:00

You don’t see a lot of cattle on the streets of Phnom Penh. Like most aspiring metropolises, the city prefers not to have too much livestock wandering its streets. One exception though, which you may spot on occasion, are the wandering ox-carts laden with pottery. These amazing contraptions can look almost like they have just jumped out of a 17th century peasant tableau or something. They often travel a couple of hundred kilometers or more before reaching the capital.
At the same time, you don’t have to go too far out of the city before you start seeing plenty of bovine creatures. Cattle in their various forms are hugely important to rural people. Strangely enough, as a country which has been influenced by Indian culture in many ways, there is no real dairy industry as such. The various types of cows, water buffalo and oxen which are seen are kept primarily as a work animal, as a way of increasing capital or as a source of meat. Just across the Japanese Bridge on Chrouy Changva are a number of abattoirs where farmers bring their cattle. As most Cambodians are Buddhist, and therefore forbidden from killing, the job of slaughtering them generally goes to Chams. Chams are a now mainly Muslim people who have lived in Cambodia for a long time, mainly near rivers. They once had their own kingdom called Champa which was located around where the middle part of Vietnam is now. It was eventually defeated after a series of wars with the Khmers in the 12th century and its population later dispersed to various places around South East Asia.
There are wild types of cattle found in the forests and remote areas of the country. The dead Guar shown above was once quite common, but has become increasingly rare. The Kouprey, Cambodia’s national animal, is almost mythical in its rarity, and skeptical experts have recently questioned whether it ever existed. There have been expeditions by various groups to find one, but the last sighting was apparently in the 1940s. It seems increasingly unlikely, but perhaps a few remain wandering the wild edges of the kingdom.
The top picture shows the typical sort of ox-cart laden with pottery that you see wandering the streets. next is a picture of cows near the runway at Pochentong airport in 1974, when the airport was under near constant bombardment. The third picture down is a farmer in 1952. The second picture from the bottom is a Guar that was killed by some hill-tribe members early in the 20th century. The final picture is of the elusive Kouprey.

Chruoy Changva Naval Base

2010-08-19T16:50:00.001+07:00

This base is located on the far side of the Chruoy Changva peninsula, on the Mekong River. There is a signpost for the turn off to it just a few kilometers past the bridge from the city, but I wouldn’t imagine that any civilian could just roll up there. It was an important installation during the wars of the 1980s and 90s. One has to keep in mind that much of the interior of the country floods for a large part of the year and there isn’t any other way to access many parts of the country during the rainy season other than by boat. While the Khmer Rouge and other allied factions didn’t have anything like a navy, they did often attack floating villages along the waterways, and there were some significant massacres of ethnic Vietnamese living in floating villages and boats in these areas right up till the mid-90s.
The base has obviously lost its importance since peace returned to the country, and the boats seem to have fallen into disrepair. Although you probably wouldn’t be welcome visiting by road, you can easily approach the site on any of the tourist boats that ply their trade along the riverside of Phnom Penh. There are two larger Russian ships which date back to the Cold War period when huge amounts of Soviet hardware arrived in the country via Vietnam, in an effort to fight the Khmer Rouge and their allies who were backed by China, ASEAN and the west at that time. They are quite impressive in a way, with their huge Star Wars storm trooper helmet-style turrets and smooth lines. On closer inspection the guns on them don’t actually look so powerful, just large caliber machine guns or small cannons, but they were probably big enough to scare off many land based attacks off back then.
What I find more interesting in a way are the smaller craft nearby. Home-made armored pontoons with welded cupolas jutting out of them, bristling with anti-tank guns and 50 mm machine guns, they don’t portray superpower backing so much as do-it-yourself tenacity in the face of international sanctions and pressure on an at that time much-criticized and maligned regime. Nowadays these Russian boats are rusting and waiting for the scrap man, but the pontoons look ready for action.

Wooden Houses.

2010-08-14T14:47:00.000+07:00

There is nothing unusual about wooden houses in Cambodia, outside of urban centers they are extremely common. Houses in Cambodia have been traditionally been built from wood, on stilts, for an undeterminable amount of time. The stilts were made from tree trunks, but more recent structures often use concrete pillars with a wooden house above. The reasons for raising a house like this vary, the most obvious reason being to avoid flooding, yet identical houses get built on hills and mountains. There is also a certain amount of security from wild animals and bandits involved in living above the ground up like this. What is probably more important than either of these concerns is air-flow. Cambodia is a very hot and humid place, and keeping cool is often difficult. Traditional wooden houses are built with high ceilings and raised on stilts with loose and porous walls and floors to aid a certain flow of air that might cool the inhabitants. During the day, few people stay up in their house anyway. The” ground floor” is often used to keep livestock at night, whether they are buffalos, pigs or ducks. These are taken to pasture during the day, and people hang out in the space, on hammocks, cooking or working, or washing from the giant urns that collect rainwater.

Cambodia had, until just a few decades ago, a huge amount of forest, so wood was easy to find and cheap. The recent rampant destruction of forest resources has changed this. Wood is now, because logging is officially banned and timber has to supposedly come from a licensed source, seriously expensive. Nobody uses wood to build now because it’s far cheaper to use concrete. Box-shaped concrete shop-houses are now gradually taking over. Some people manage adorn their villas with teak panels and mahogany stair-cases, but for most it’s just used for interior doors or furniture. What has to be taken into account is the security element. As a result of very real problems over the last four decades or so, security is paramount for people here. I have never lived in a house here that didn’t have bars on the windows, metal gates and razor-wire on the edges of the compound.

Wooden house aren’t at all secure. Your only defense might be keeping a few hungry mutts or geese downstairs, but anyone with a blade and intention could get through the floor, if they even had to bother. There are often easier ways to break in, through the flimsy doors or even walls or roofs. While I admire these buildings the fact that any vermin can get in if it wants is a concern.

All these pictures were taken in the central part of Phnom Penh around the Daun Penh, Prampi Makara and O’Russei areas, on the 16^th of April 2010 when the city was pretty-much deserted because of Khmer New year. They are only remarkable because of their central locations and because they’ll all be replaced by more solid and less traditional structures soon. You can see these looming at the edges of most of the pictures, gradually encroaching on the wooden houses and inevitably replacing them.

The former French Governor's Palace.

2010-05-28T16:37:00.000+07:00

This huge building and complex on Sisowath Quay is not easily spotted because of the three meter high walls topped with fencing that now surround it. In the earlier picture, titled Hotel du Commisseriat de la Republique Francaise it had little but a few chained bollards and a hedge to protect it, I don’t know when the picture was taken, I’d guess in the late 1950s, but it may be more recent. Apparently it was Pol Pot’s main residence in Phnom Penh during his reign, and in the late days of the Democratic Kampuchea regime it was used as an attractive location for visiting foreign journalists and a film crew from Yugoslavia who all interviewed Pol Pot there. This was remarkable in that these were probably the only interviews with westerners that he did during his whole time in power. He didn’t do any before that, and in the following couple of decades prior to his death he did just a few, mainly in his last few years.

In the early 1990s the building served as the headquarters for UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia). Its Civil Administration, Civil Police and Military units were all run from here.

The exterior of the main building seems to have changed little in the intervening years. It almost appears as if a French-era crest still remains over the main doors, but it’s probably a newer one. It is now the Council for the Development of Cambodia headquarters. It’s difficult to get a good view of the place, but you can easily spot a few annexes and outbuildings in the compound that look like newish structures. Although the CDC is a powerful body, their headquarters seem in many ways a quiet and serene place considering the location near the center of the city.

Tonle Bassac Commune 1991

2010-05-26T17:00:00.000+07:00

The previous article had a bit of a space in it because other than Roland Neveu’s black and white picture of a village militia training outside the “white” building in the early 1990s, there was nothing from that era, just 60s and modern pictures. Serge Corrieras is a photographer who spent much of the 1990s working in Cambodia, and many of his excellent pictures can be viewed on Flikr. It is quite amazing to see the difference between the city now and how it was then. The first couple of pictures show the “Gray” building, which was rebuilt soon after into the Phnom Penh Center, an office complex which was probably the only of its kind till relatively recently. The other pictures show the “white” building, or Boudeng as it is more commonly known. The spaces between the two building had plenty of grass growing and you can see cows and pigs grazing around. At the time the pictures were taken, in 1991, Sothearous Boulevard nearby was called Lenin Boulevard. Later these spaces were filled in with various shacks, houses and other structures which have all pretty much gone by now.

More of Serge Corrieras' pictures can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scrambler450/sets/

Tonle Bassac Commune

2010-05-21T16:52:00.000+07:00

After achieving independence in late 1953, Cambodia was faced with some serious problems in terms of transportation, the lack of a practical port that could handle large vessels.
In the period prior to the French protectorate, King Ang Duong had a very good and straight road built between the-then capital, Oudong, and Kampot which is on a river adjacent to the south coast and the sea. In more ancient times a route had existed between the Mekong delta and the various capitals which came in to being further inland in the Khmer Empire. Obviously this route still exists, but even when ostensibly under Khmer control in the 17th century, Portuguese missionaries noted that it was far from safe, and the mouth of the river was apparently controlled by a treacherous Indian pirate. With control of the delta area shifting to the ever south-spreading Vietnamese in the late 18th century, things became more difficult so the port at Kampot was developed.
During the near-century of the French protectorate, and colonization of adjacent Vietnam and Laos, most trade went through Saigon, Cambodia remained a backwater during the period and saw relatively little progress in terms of development compared to its eastern neighbor.
After independence, which it has to be said was a very gentle transition in contrast to events in nearby Vietnam, Cambodia managed to remain on good terms with the French. As the route from the delta to the Phnom Penh port went through an often volatile South Vietnam, and relations were not always as good as often reported, the new government needed a new route for exports and imports that was not so dependent on external events. The idea of using the Phnom Penh to Bangkok railway, which did actually run a straight-through route for a couple of brief periods, was entertained, but this didn’t get away from the problem of dependence on other countries.
The solution that was eventually put into place was the port at Sihanoukville, built with French aid, and the Khmer-American Friendship highway which linked this once-remote area with Phnom Penh. A railway was later built with Chinese aid, but that’s another story. In the meantime, before the new port and links to the capital were finished, something else needed to be done.
The port on the river in Phnom Penh had only been able to handle relatively small ships, so an Office of Dredging was set up. Their mission was to constantly dredge the Tonle Sap River, both at the port and the area down-river. One of the perhaps unplanned results of this was the creation of 700 hectares of land around Phnom Penh, some previously swampy or flood-prone land, but much of it where there was once a river. Sothearous Boulevard used to run along the river front, if you look at it now its hundreds of meters from any large body of water. All the land to the east of Sothearous Boulevard was actually river up until the late 1950s.
If you study the old maps it also appears that Koh Pich or Diamond Island, was not originally an island at all. It is also land reclaimed from the Bassac River. What happened was that as the Bassac River was filled in to create the land where the parks, casino and new National assembly and Australian embassy now stand, a channel was left between this reclaimed land and the other part. The main course of the Bassac River was changed and cut through the top of the peninsula where Chhba Ampul, across the Monivong Bridge is now. At the northern part of this peninsula you can see evidence of this where roads which were once much longer now suddenly stop and drop into the river.
Part of what was prime, flat, reclaimed land with an unbroken view and breeze coming off the nearby rivers was developed in the early 1960s. It was built around the same time as Olympic Stadium, and designed by the same architect, Van Molyvann. At first it was planned as housing for visiting athletes for the 1966 Ganefo Games, a short-lived Asian alternative to the Olympics,
but ended up more as affordable housing for civil servants. There were two parallel long blocks of five-story apartments. They looked very smart and had nice open spaces with trees around them. Nowadays it is hard to imagine what they originally looked like.
Most current residents would recognize the scruffy-looking White Building, or Boudeng as it’s often called by locals. What many people don’t realize is that the nearby, modern-looking Phnom Penh Center was once its sister Gray Building. Ironically the white building is now gray through neglect, while the gray one is now painted white. Quite different in its original construction, the Gray Building was rebuilt in the early 1990s into the more regular square-shaped office block shape we know today. Pictures from that time show the area having still having many open spaces. By the end of that 1990s this was not the case, and a giant shanty-town had spread out between all around the buildings and adjacent areas. No-one really cared about this land for a long time, it was a dirty lawless slum and continued to be till fairly recently. The area was staunchly pro-ruling party, in a city that wasn’t always reliable in that regard. Any sign of trouble and the Tonle Bassac crew could be relied on to lend a hand. This became less important over the years though, and as investment mushroomed in Cambodia, land became hugely valuable. At the same time I’d imagine that there were decisions made to get rid of many of the slums around town, perhaps because besides being eyesores they were lawless places which a lot of crime in the city emanated from.
The triangular patch of slum between Boudeng and Sothearous Boulevard went up in flames sometime in 2003, in rather suspicious circumstances. Not in any way related was the statement later in the year by the city governor that arson was no longer an acceptable way to deal with disputes over property. The slums around there weren’t actually as bad as they often initially appeared. They had streets, barbers, grocery shops, cafes and all sorts of other businesses going on, and were very vibrant rather than in any way threatening during the day. I only ever went there at night with friends who lived there and wouldn’t have ever wandered in there alone. No big deal, the most obvious difference was the amount of kids sniffing glue around the alleyways; I guess they’d spent all day out strolling in the traffic in town.
It’s all completely gone now, the inhabitants have been moved to districts on the edge of the city, sometimes given plots of land and/or compensation, other times not, especially for those who tried to hang in too long and push for too much compensation, or those who couldn’t for one reason or another prove they had any right to live there. There were promises made to the occupants of this area and other places around the country concerning ownership or rights to stay in homes they had occupied for more than a certain number of years, but these promises later turned out to be empty.

The development of the area has been slow. The adjoining Koh Pich has seen a lot of construction, but other than the new Australian Embassy, not much other than a few new roads have been built on where all those slums once were. Little other than green metal-fences can be seen, with attendant security guards.

The picture of the village militia training in 1993 is by Roland Neveu.

The Cambodian Living Arts picture, one of my favorite pictures ever, is by Isabelle Lesser.

Olympic Stadium.

2010-05-09T19:41:00.001+07:00

This was designed by eminent Cambodian architect Van Molyvann and completed in 1964. The first few pictures show the huge pond which was originally in front of it, and crowds at its inauguration.
One picture shows the stadium in around 1974, when it was used as a camp for republican soldiers and their families.
The black and white ones show Khmer Rouge troops parading in front of the stadium after their victory, Pol Pot in one picture and then Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary, members of the Khmer Rouge leadership.
Another picture shows Raoul Jenner, a political analyst on the terraces of a rather run-down stadium in the early 1990s. The last picture shows the stadium dressed up for the 2009 World Disabled Volleyball Cup. In recent years the stadium has been painted and kept fairly well, although it's not difficult to see where improvements could be made.

The Old Stadium.

2010-04-22T16:12:00.001+07:00

The Old Stadium, also known as the RCAF (Royal Cambodian Armed Forces) Stadium, or Stad Cha to the locals, is located just north of the Chruoy Chanva Bridge roundabout in Russei Keo district. The French embassy and former Funcinpec headquarters are just a couple of the notable structures/former structures in the area.
Its distinctive brick lighting towers can still be spotted from far away. The area around the stadium was sold off some years back, and has since been developed. The older picture isn’t quite as old as it looks. The green oil tanker gives it a 1950s look, along with the tint. However the 4WD behind it looks distinctly like a 1998 Land-cruiser, and the billboards look even more modern, so I’d guess it was taken around 2003 or so.
It was in some ways a very pretty picture, compared to the more built up look it has now, with a big development ringing the whole stadium, and all the surrounding streets built up to some extent too. Overall though, it’s still a dog-rough neighborhood, I’ve worked in it plenty of times. The whole now built-up street on the east of the stadium is taken up by auto-parts businesses. Greasy - pavements with grease-monkeys chucking oily chunks of metal about in a whole stinking carnage of sump-smoke, busted valves and burnt-out radiators. It’s a great place when you need some spares, but no place to go looking for coffee or pretty much anything else. The road used to continue north from here, and was the actual national route, but there’s no way through now north of the stadium. What used to be a thoroughfare is now a T-junction with a row of bog-standard Chinese-style shop-houses blocking the way. There isn’t really any way around it either, I’ve been through the back-lanes beyond with local and foreign friends but none of the tracks go anywhere anymore except deep into small neighborhoods, with their shop-houses striking up in the middle of all sorts of traditional houses, shacks and lean-tos. The main road now follows the river a few hundred meters to the east.
Anyway, the pictures are both taken from around the same spot, perhaps ten years apart, the differences are remarkable. You have the same bushes, light patches on the paving, and the lighting towers are still standing proud. Besides that, everything has changed, and the big mature trees in the foreground along with the parkland are now just more shop-houses.

Unchanged

2010-04-22T15:55:00.000+07:00

Although most places around town have changed a lot in the last few decades, the view from Wat Phnom towards the park at 108 street hasn't changed much at all in the last 50 years, nor has this building just off Pasteur. The new pictures were taken at Khmer New Year when the streets are nearly empty.

Cambodian Cars

2010-04-01T16:31:00.000+07:00

Back in the early part of the 20th century, Cambodia was a French protectorate, which in reality meant a colony. As could be imagined, most cars were imported from France, Citroens being the most common. Very few of these remain, the climate is not kind to body-work or steel, and unless kept in a good shelter and maintained machines decay very fast. One friend of mine owned a late 1930s Citroen, which was lovely to be driven around in. It had an engine from a modern Toyota, and odd-looking chrome hubcaps, but otherwise was an original colonial-era ride.
In the late days of the French era, a couple of assembly plants were set up in Cambodia, one at the new Sihanoukville port, and another on street 80 near the Phnom Penh Port. The Sihanoukville one assembled a box-van variant of the well-known 2CV model. The 2CV’s name came from French, the Deux Chevalle, or two horse power, and was a very low-powered but affordable little workhorse, born from the austerity of the post WWII years. As you can see from the pictures, it had a pick-up back with a canvas covering. The Citroen showroom which is shown in one picture was on Norodom Boulevard.
After independence, there were some notable achievements in creating industry in Cambodia. The SONATRAC (Societe National Des Tracteurs) plant in Sihanoukville fabricated and manufactured trucks, tractors, motorcycles and also motors for other industrial uses. Later, after the refusal of U.S. aid, a local style jeep was also manufactured. I have only seen pictures of these, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any surviving models.
The first picture is of a Citroen at Angkor Wat in 1910, and the next shows the Postal Car that ran the route between Phnom Penh and Saigon in the late 1920s, the picture looks like it was taken in Saigon. The next three are of the assembly plant and publicity shots of the Cambodian 2CV variant in the 1950s. The seventh picture is a Citroen sign on a wall above the old plant on street 80. Second last is the Citroen showroom on Norodom Boulevard, and the last is of a burnt out Simca in the early 1970s war.

Oudong

2010-03-05T12:44:00.001+07:00

Oudong.
I first visited Oudong, which is only forty or so kilometers north of the Capital in 2005. Oudong was the capital of Cambodia at various times between 1618 and 1866, but not much remains that would remind a visitor of this historical detail. Amongst all the decaying, renovated and newer stupas on the hills one site in particular stood out.
All that remained of this temple was a few walls and some giant stumps of columns, with the almost unrecognizable plinth and crossed legs of a formerly enormous Buddha statue. The columns brought the massive temple of Karnak in Luxor, Egypt to mind. In both places the columns seemed to stand strangely against the sky, with little hint that any had actually served a practical purpose of holding up a roof at some forgotten time before.

Although it looked somehow ancient, the Vihear Preah Ath Roes or “Vihara of the 18 cubit Buddha”, was actually only finished and dedicated in 1911 during King Sisowath’s reign. The area around Oudong mountain suffered heavy aerial bombardment during the 1970-75 civil war, from Cambodian Republican Forces and the US B52s and F16s that backed them up. Although at first I came to believe that this bombing had caused the destruction of the temple, after discussing the situation with locals I changed my mind. What they told me was that the pagoda at the bottom of the hill, close to the current car-park and restaurant area had been flattened by bombing. The temple with the big lonely columns had been dynamited by the Khmer Rouge forces later, in 1977.

Returning to the mountain in 2009, I was aware that some reconstruction had been going on. I braved the mid-April heat and wandered up to have a look. The 18 cubit Buddha had been completely rebuilt, a lot of work had been put into the walls, and the basic framework for a roof was up. I have to admit I preferred it the way it had been, but that is understandably not a sentiment shared by many people here. I may find derelict houses and rustic war ruins attractive, but others don’t need reminding. I’ll try and drop up to Oudong again soon and see how it is all progressing.

Monorom Hotel

2010-03-01T21:08:00.000+07:00

This was one of the first large modern hotels built in Phnom Penh. It stands on Monivong Boulevard, not far from Central Market and the railway station. At the time it went up there was little development along what was to become one of the city’s most metropolitan and built up streets.

The photo of the “Khmer Rouge” troops passing by the hotel on April 17^th 1975 poses some questions. The ”Artful Dodger” character out front is wearing some strange-looking bandoliers and has a certain jolly expression which seems very exaggerated. He certainly doesn’t have the usual stoic and mean expression that you usually see in pictures of KR soldiers, and the people in the truck look to me to be civilians. The flag flying from the truck is one which has often been identified as a Democratic Kampuchea flag, but I have rarely seen pictures of it actually being used.

The crowd to the left of the truck are mainly dressed in camouflage military fatigues, of the type worn by Lon Nol’s Republican forces. I understand that there was a certain amount of jubilance at first on the streets of Phnom Penh, but I ‘m surprised to see Republican soldiers celebrating. I thought they would have been too busy getting rid of their uniforms first, as they were the number one target for execution in days to come. .

When the capital was finally taken, it wasn’t by one unified army, but by several allied groups from almost autonomous zones of the country. Some confusion, and even a certain amount of fighting erupted between the various groups at first. In the first few hours of confusion, one particularly strange event occurred. Some people, perhaps students or military decided to join in. They dressed up as Khmer Rouge combatants, and paraded through the streets on trucks proclaiming victory. It’s not clear what their motives were, perhaps they thought they would just blend in and get on with things, but I doubt any of them got very far.

The first picture shows the Monorom in the early 1960s, the B&W is from April 17th 1975. The bottom two are more recent, as you can see it hasn't changed a lot other than the awning along the front.

North Riverside

2010-02-08T21:08:00.000+07:00

Fifty years ago there were no fancy restaurants or families out on strolls around the riverside, it was a rough and ready port area, and the chandlers, shipping companies and other businesses catered to the merchants and crews that rocked up there. Some of the oldest surviving businesses along the quay are the two coffin shops along the north stretch. They always seemed odd to me with all the other shops selling shoes and CDs nearby, but I guess they have been there for far longer, and somehow business is still good.
Known as the Riverside or Mot Tonle, a century or so back there were just muddy banks where it now stands. The road was at one time the only one in a north-south direction in the area.
The most northerly stretch of it collapsed and was rebuilt three or four times in the last decade before its latest makeover. Part of this stretch covers what used to be the entrance to a canal and perhaps this had some effect on its subsequent erosion and failure.
In recent years the riverside has been the scene of some major, and long overdue drainage works. While much of the work was hidden behind walls and billboards for nearly three years, a lot has gone on. The stretch that kept collapsing has been completely rebuilt, to a far higher standard than the previous structures. I hope it lasts a lot longer too. It has regular sets of steps along its length, and somehow the slope isn’t too steep to get a motorbike down either.
The first picture shows the area before an actual quay was built, perhaps in the late 19th century. The next two are of the collapsed quay from ground and river level in early 1996. The last is the new quay on a recent Saturday in February 2010, with the water very low and plenty of people fishing along the edge. It’s great to see so many people enjoying the riverfront again.

Chinese Temples in Phnom Penh.

2010-01-27T21:51:00.000+07:00

Chinese Temples around Phnom Penh.

With Chinese New Year just around the corner, I thought I'd show a few of these often unnoticed places around town.

Unlike Cambodian Buddhist temples with their huge compounds, towers and spires, Chinese temples are often quiet hard to spot. Even though they often have quite elaborate gates, they seem to slot in between other shop houses and city buildings in such a way that if you aren’t looking for them, you can easily miss them. Some of these temples are Buddhist, and others are Taoist, but I can't claim to know a lot more about them.

The top photo is a fairly plain looking temple on St 167, near the huge Chinese school. The second shows a very elaborate looking one on St 232, in the Boueng Prolit area. It has a recent date outside, and was set up around 2003. The third picture down is of a garish looking place on 276 street, not far from the intersection of Monivong and Sihanouk Boulevards.The fourth picture is the gate of a newly built and ornate temple on Chruoy Changva peninsula, about a kilometer north of the bridge on the banks of the Tonle Sap river. The next picture shows one of the interiors and altars of the same complex, and the one after the staircase down to the river. The second last picture is a temple on Sisowath Quay in the port area, and the last is probably the best known one in town, on St. 13 near Kandal Market. There is one more Chinese temple on St 230 near the Mondiale Center, and a further one on St 53 near the 108 street park, I haven't managed top photograph either yet. If you know of any others let me know.

Cambodian Churches

2009-12-20T20:40:00.000+07:00

Catholicism never really took off in a big way in Cambodia, the first missionaries turned up in the late 1600s with the Portuguese explorers and freebooters who were the first Europeans in the region. They had little success, in contrast with widespread conversions in neighboring Vietnam, and among the hill tribes of Vietnam, Laos and Burma. There were small missions and chapels set up around the country, and although at one stage at least one king toyed with the idea of converting, Cambodians in the main just weren’t interested. Many a priest spent their lonely days rotting at missions in far-flung villages where they were at best humored or ignored, but never believed.

During more recent years of war and strife, many more Cambodians, especially in the border camps, became Christian. Nowadays things are a little different, and besides the Roman Catholics there are a plethora of missionaries, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other denominations that operate with varying success and often run large operations around the country. I wasn’t so much interested in these modern churches and their buildings, but more with the older church buildings in Cambodia. What I found most interesting was one thing. We constantly hear that during the Pol Pot era all traces of foreign influence, religion and culture were wiped out and smashed, yet here we have quite a few churches which survived intact, often with big crosses standing on their roofs. Democratic Kampuchea was certainly not a country where religion could be freely practiced, even though its constitution stated so, but it doesn’t seem like they were trying very hard to make it or its symbols disappear.

Kiang Khleang Church

This was the first one I went for, mainly because I had seen it so knew it still existed, and also because on an old map it was directly opposite the next one I wanted to look for, on the other side of the huge Tonle Sap River. The road to it runs under the east pier of the Chrouy Changva Bridge, and it’s quite amazing what a difference a hundred meters makes, because it’s dusty-track and village-style all of a sudden. Then you come across what at first appears to be some sort of anomaly, a church building, with a big cross at the top. The building isn’t a church anymore, but is part of what seems like a well-kept orphanage complex. It has a second level and steps, and a few great murals painted for or by the kids there. Some of the murals have a distinctly Christian message which leads me to believe that a Christian organization still runs the place. The chapel, and a nearby tower and some other connected buildings are all in very good repair, and despite their age have obviously been well maintained. The top three pictures are of this church and the nearby tower.

The Port Church.

This sits down a little lane opposite the port. It is completely surrounded by a slum neighborhood, and it was difficult to get a good view of it. It’s a long time since services were held here too; the whole chapel building and all its nooks and crannies have been turned into a bunch of separate living quarters. These are all divided up with light plywood walls, and looking up from any of the living spaces you can see the beautifully plastered old church ceiling. The 4th, 5th and 6th picture are exteriors of this building, and the next one shows the interior ceiling above all the internal partitions.

Russei Keo Church

All the churches I found in Phnom Penh are actually in Russei Keo district, so this is something of a misnomer. It is easily reached by going through a large arch with “Catholic Church” in huge lettering off the main Phnom Penh to Oudong road. On the old map it has a large cemetery behind it, and I was surprised to see that the whole grounds still existed as they had on old maps. There were a few modern buildings near the entrance, perhaps for teaching and administration, and there was an obviously very new chapel around the back. Not far behind that was a sala-style building. A sala is a type of open-sided meeting room found in most villages around Cambodia. The sala was completely normal if a little small and plain, but it had a big cross on the back wall. Next to it was a stupa, like the sort you can see around any pagoda, a big faux-Angkor Wat cement construction. The funeral urns piled up inside had a mixture of decorations varying between photos of the deceased and Icons of the Madonna or Bleeding Heart of Jesus. There is one huge old French-period building in the middle of the grounds that is currently being refurbished, and it is sure to be a wonderful looking one soon again. There was a big problem though. This was the only church in the area that I had a few really old photographic references for, and it was gone. It was a shame to see that nothing remained of the old church but it was interesting to see that the place still serves its original purpose and is run by the same organization as before. The 8th picture down shows the church as it was in the early part of the 20th century, the 9th shows the unusual Christian sala, and the 9th shows the old buildings which are being refurbished on the grounds.

North Russei Keo Church.

This was somewhere on the opposite side of the Tonle Sap from where the Kiang Khleang church still is. Although old maps show some big or important roads and intersections around this area, the only one that still matters is National route 5, the road to Oudong. Going anywhere off it entails going down a warren of lanes through wild neighborhoods leading to who knows where, and after much effort I gave up on finding this for now.

Bokor Church

Not in Phnom Penh, but high on the Bokor plateau, this place has been mostly silent since the early seventies. It’s a solid concrete construction, and has a strange lay out where the vestry seems to take up a lot more space than the alter and pews. It was the scene of a battle back in 1979 where Khmer Rouge troops took refuge in the church while Vietnamese soldiers fired at them from the Palace Casino a little further up the hill. Back in its day the church was white, but it has by now developed an attractively rustic bright orange lichen and green moss covering. The 10th picture is one I took of Bokor church at sunset in 2005, it almost looks like somewhere in Europe.

Battambang Cathedral

This was an impressive- looking structure in its day, sitting on top of a hill, but unfortunately nothing remains of it today, except the hill. The last picture is of Battambang Cathedral sometime in the early 20th century.

Sihanoukville Church

This was obviously built during the Sangkum Reastre era and looks like it could have been designed by eminent Cambodian architect Van Molyvan or one of his contemporaries. I have no idea if it still exists or not. The last picture shows this strangely modern-looking church in 1960.

The Canal/Park at St.108

2009-12-10T19:36:00.000+07:00

The park which now runs between Sisowath Quay and the Railway Station was once a canal. Called the Canal de Vernéville, it was built around 1894 to drain the nearby area. It was filled in in the 1920s and became a park. The top picture is an aerial view of the canal and the "Dollar Bridge"near the quay, from the early part of the 20th century. You can see that the city didn't extend too far away from the river at that time. The second picture is a close up of the "Dollar Bridge". The third picture shows the uninterrupted view of the park from the railway station to the river in the 1940s, and the color picture shows a view from Norodom up to the railway station in 1960.
In recent times the park had become rather worn out and dusty looking in many places. Down near the river was a quite decrepit, but popular outdoor stage. This area was developed and became the night market. For a time around 2006, the whole park was refurbished, with new flower beds, paving and lighting. Unfortunately this didn't last, as more recent work on the new center city drainage scheme and the Canadia Bank Tower has turned much of the park into a construction site. When all the work is finished it should look good again.

The scale of Tuol Sleng.

2009-11-06T21:02:00.000+07:00

Anyone who has ever visited Phnom Penh probably knows this place. A very dark place, also known by the designation S21, it was at first located on Street 51 where the municipal police headquarters were, but in 1976 was moved to the former location of the Chau Ponhea Yat high school. It became a by-word for terror and was where the enemies of the Khmer Rouge were exterminated, many of them from within the organization’s own ranks. What most people don’t know is the original scale of this place. The central part has been preserved as a museum, but while it was still in operation it actually extended much further than just the grounds of the school. The elite Khmer Rouge Division 703 was in control of this place, and from their reports it stretched out from Monivong Boulevard in the east, across to Street 163 in the west. It apparently reached as far as Sihanouk Boulevard to the north, and down to Mao Tse Tung south. All of this area was surrounded by walls, fencing and barbed wire.
Very recently, I have had conversations with residents who contend that it was even bigger than previously reported. One resident who has lived in the neighborhood since 1982 has informed me that the compound didn’t stop at 163 but actually went as far as 199 to the west. At that time he says the previously enclosed area was obvious, and many of the now built up areas didn’t look anything like they do now, and for example some streets weren’t paved, but had banana trees planted all the way down the centre. On the map, the red area is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum that is still preserved. The green part is the area which former Division 703 members say was the compound, and the blue area is the part which people in the neighborhood have told me was also included in the compound.
It is my understanding that the central, red part of the map was the actual prison, where people were incarcerated. There have been many studies which have shown that buildings close to this central area were used as interrogation centers. The greater areas which I have marked were probably not parts of the actual prison, but were enclosed areas where staff lived and grew vegetables etc. The reason that I feel this is important is that many of the Khmer Rouge top leadership have said they knew nothing of the existence of the place, and obviously this is doubtful because it is a very large section of the city.

The top black & white picture shows children who were rescued by Vietnamese troops from Tuol Sleng in January 1979. Most of these children still survive and are around middle age now.For a long time it was thought that only 7 people survived the centre, but recently it has been disclosed that quite a few more did. The color picture shows an exterior view of the Tuol Sleng museum as it is now. There are many high-school buildings around the city with similar appearance.

Le Royal.

2009-11-03T15:27:00.000+07:00

This hotel, completed in 1929, for a long time held the distinction of being Phnom Penh’s highest building. This honor was later taken by The Intercontinental Hotel, and is at least for now held by the new forty-storey Canadia Bank headquarters. It was then, and remains, one of the finest hotels in the city. During the Khmer Rouge regime many of the leadership lived here. After the Vietnamese intervention in 1979 it was where the few international organizations that tried to aid the country’s recovery were based, along with many of the visiting journalists. It was called The Sammaki during the 1980s. The first picture shows the hotel in 1960, the other is recent.

Crowds

2009-11-02T21:13:00.000+07:00

The older picture shows French colonial troops at Wat Phnom for a visit by Marshal Joffre, a WWI hero, in 1921. There was an Avenue Joffre named after him for a time, it is the one that runs from Le Royal to Wat Phnom. The other picture is a similar same view but in 2006, showing crowds at Water Festival.

Bon Om Tuk or Water Festival

2009-10-30T17:05:00.000+07:00

Most holidays in Cambodia involve city people leaving towns to visit their ancestral villages, but Water Festival is different. Millions of people from the countryside flood into Phnom Penh for the three days of the festival. They watch boat races, watch concerts and have a good look around, as many don't visit the capital often. The picture shows some dragon boat racing around 50 years ago, I'm not sure where. It is the biggest festival of the year, and celebrates a long ago naval victory and the reverse of the Tonle Sap river among other things. It falls on the 1st,2nd and 3rd of November this year.

2009-10-24T13:20:00.001+07:00

A poster from 1952.

Wat Phnom

2009-10-18T11:16:00.000+07:00

This place is in many ways the centre, or heart of Phnom Penh. The word “Wat” in general Khmer use means Pagoda, or working temple. The word “Prasat” is used for ruined temples which are no longer in use. One exception to this is Angkor Wat, which is sometimes formally referred to as “Prasat Angkor Wat’. The word “Phnom” means hill or mountain, and Wat Phnom is the only hill in the nearby vicinity. The “Pehn” part of the city's name comes from an old story about how the pagoda and city were founded. Apparently a Lady Pehn found a tree trunk containing four images of the Buddha floating in the nearby river. This seems entirely possible, superstitions or beliefs aside. I have often, in various places in Asia, seen statues that have gradually been enveloped by trees, and some of these may sometimes be cut adrift by floods and could then possibly turn up downstream. So these statues were taken to a nearby hill, and Wat Phnom was born, in 1372. I may have read somewhere that the hill was raised quite a bit by the slow addition of buckets of soil, but I’m not too sure. after the abandonment of Angkor in 1431 Phnom Penh became the capital for a brief period, then the capital moved further north to Longvek and then Oudong. Phnom Penh was the capital again for a short time from 1813 till 1834 when it was destroyed by the Thai army. The capital moved again to Oudong, but finally returned to Phnom Penh at the time of the French arrival.

The first picture shows Wat Phnom perhaps in the early 20th century, the plaque you can see was put there to commemorate the return of the western provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap after over a century of Thai control. There is now a giant clock made partly with flowers and lawn in front of the plaque. The second picture shows a rather forlorn-looking Wat Phnom in 1960.

In recent years Wat Phnom has had a huge makeover. Where there were previously some shack-style restaurants and fortune-tellers stalls, there is now a very nice playground and a paved square with a statue in the middle. The pavements around the hill have been repaired, and new drainage has been installed. However, the place still has a somewhat seedy style to it, and is often mentioned in the papers in relation to vice, thieving and other crime. It is probably best avoided after sunset.

Le Pont Des Najas or The Naga Bridge

2009-10-17T18:37:00.000+07:00

This bridge on Norodom Boulevard spanned the old canal and led towards Wat Phnom. The canal was one of many that were built to drain the city as it expanded. It was filled in sometime around the mid 1920s and the bridge which was then redundant was demolished. The area of the canal is now mostly a thin park. In recent years a stone imitation of the bridge has been installed, which can be seen in the second picture. The building with the tower which can be seen in the top two images is barely standing now.

Psah Thmei more recently.

2009-10-17T18:22:00.000+07:00

The first picture was taken from nearby Sorya Supermarket in 2006, and you can see how the market appeared for many years, quite scruffy looking with a mess of stalls, umbrellas and tarpaulins spread out between the wings. The other pictures were taken a few days ago and show the refurbished building with the new covered areas out front. These look very well and have been built in a similar style to the older main structure. The project was done with French funding, they apparently had some difficulties as the water table was found to be only 6 inches beneath the floor, but it was still done surprisingly quickly.

Phnom Penh Cathedral

2009-10-17T13:34:00.001+07:00

This was built sometime in the early 1960s, and was situated on Monivong Boulevard, somewhere about mid-way between where the railway station and Phnom Penh Hotel are now. It was demolished by hand in 1975. Many overseas Khmers, intellectuals and left-wingers returned to Cambodia after the Khmer rouge victory to help the new regime. They were not trusted and were incarcerated, many in a prison that was located at Boueng Trabek High School. Some were set to demolishing the cathedral, which was very hard work as it was built from reinforced concrete. Even in modern day Cambodia this is the normal way of demolishing a building, it's a lot cheaper to get a few guys and give them sledgehammers than hire a machine. Anyway, not a trace of the cathedral remains.

Psah Thmei 1974 & 1960

2009-10-17T13:27:00.002+07:00

These are a few pictures of the market and nearby transport. The black and white one is from 1974, at the height of the civil war.

Psah Thmei

2009-10-17T13:15:00.000+07:00

Psah Thmei is known in English as the Central Market, although it's name actually translates as "New Market". It was built on what was previously a lake. In one of the aerial views a huge empty lot can be seen where it now stands. I would presume this picture was taken around 1935 when construction started. It was completed in 1937, and has just recently had an extensive refurbishment. It has a quite unique art-deco style, and was built in a way that makes as much use of natural ventilation as possible. In some views it looks like a spaceship.

Phnom Penh 1925, 1928 and 1993.

2009-10-17T12:59:00.001+07:00

The first map has no date, but may be from around 1925. The second, much more detailed one has a date-1928 and the third is from 1993. I have scaled the maps and sized them so the main features are in the same places, more or less.

In the oldest map, Boueng Keng Kang shows as a huge lake, or wetland, south of where Sihanouk Boulevard runs today. In the later map, the lake is shown only on the west side of what is now Monivong Boulevard. Saloth Sar lived in this lakeside area in the late 1950s.

The Champ de Courses, or racetrack, is in exactly the same location and alignment as the current structure.

Wat Svay Pape is shown as almost on the river bank. I was aware that most of the Tonle Bassac neighborhood had been reclaimed from the river, but it’s a pretty long walk nowadays to the river from that particular pagoda.

There’s an inlet, which I presume was another drainage canal shown in the area that is now Hun Sen Park, all the way from the river to where Independence Monument now stands. More interesting, is a little lake, adjoining one end of the palace walls. Back in those days it was called Etang Sacre, perhaps it had some ceremonial function. This is where the park with the Vietnam Friendship memorial now stands, and it still has a few ponds and water features which were built around 2008 when the park last got a make-over.

The mosques on Chruoy Changva are shown in exactly the same place as they are now, somehow though the one at Boueng Kak, which was one of the oldest structures in the city at the time, is not marked as a mosque. One map shows Russei Keo church which was largely destroyed in the war. On the opposite bank you can see the Keang Khleang church, a little-known place that still stands today.

The whole west side of Monivong was obviously a lake until recently, and Boueng Kak was originally much more spread out than it later became. The better known canal that went along where the park between 106 and 108 streets turned north just before the point where the railway station now stands. The land drained along there was the later location for the Phnom Penh Cathedral, the French Embassy, and the Phnom Penh Hotel.

One of the most remarkable things when comparing the maps is how the Bassac river has changed course, leaving only a small channel where it used to flow, and carving Koh Pich off from what was part of peninsula that Chba Ampul still stands on.

Edit: From what I've read since posting this, it appears that Koh Pich was formed naturally by deposits in recent decades. It was farmed for some of the year but would be submerged in the wet season. Then more recently it stopped being submerged annually and became more permanent before it was developed.

Phnom Penh Places

2009-10-17T12:57:00.000+07:00

This blog will be used to show Phnom Penh, and other places in Cambodia, as they were and as they are now. The city is changing rapidly and I would like others to see and read about its growth, progress and stories. Any readers submissions of pictures or comments are most welcome.