Cattle

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

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.

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.

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/

Tonle Bassac Commune

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.

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.