Wat Phnom Clock

This giant clock, almost 20 meters wide, was a gift from China in the year 2000 and replaced a previous one that came from France and was installed in the early 1960s. The clock is in front of a monument commemorating the return of the western provinces of Battambang, Siem Reap and Banteay Meanchey from Thai control in 1907. The main reason I wanted to make this post was to show the incredible changes over the years, especially when you see Hopper Stone's picture from 1993.

View around 1940

1946

1961

1961

1970

Nigerian UNTAC troops in front of a forlorn looking hill 1993

A recent view.

The Hopper Stone picture is from ethicaltraveler.org
More of Hopper's work can be seen on his site: stonefoto.com

Olympic Stadium Part II

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 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/

The former French Governor's Palace.

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

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/