Phnom Penh Pachyderms

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

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

Boueng Kak

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 Sap 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

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.

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

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.