That's Phnom Penh. Anything goes. Literally almost anything is possible if you have the money.
The country just opened to tourism about 10 years ago. The industry is taking off. There's a crazy, "wild west" energy to the place. Skyscrapers are going up all over town. Western-style restaurants and internet cafes line the riverfront.
And yet signs of the country's grim history are evident everywhere. The poverty there is possibly the worst I've seen. It's in your face constantly. Entire families sleep on the streets outside of tourist restaurants. The number of people missing limbs, presumably victims of landmines, is shocking. The number of prostitutes is not shocking -- they're everywhere, too. The tuk-tuk drivers are the most obnoxious I've encountered, and that, my friends, is saying something.
I wasn't looking forward to visiting, quite frankly. I had read the place is dirty and dangerous. I figured I'd spend an obligatory day, maybe two, seeing sights and then head for the beach. I was both pleasantly surprised and deeply disturbed by what I saw there.
The downtown area, by the intersection of the Tonle Sap, Bassac and Mekong Rivers, is quite beautiful in parts. Look how clean, well-tended and free of dog poop this public park is.
This is another park that forms an 'L' with the above park. Here's a monk walking in the foreground with Independence Monument in the background. It's modeled after the towers at Angkor Wat.
The city name means Penh Hill. It's named after a woman who is sort of the patron saint of the city. A shrine to her was built as part of Wat Phnom (Temple Hill) on the highest hill in the city.
In fact, it's the only hill in the city.
Careful, don't get vertigo looking at this next pic, taken from the summit of the hill. It took nearly 20 seconds of grueling climbing to reach the top.
Nepal it ain't. In fact, this hill is artificial!
The National Museum worth a look, although I found the exterior more interesting than the interior.
Inside are exhibits on the history of the country, with lots of statues and carvings from the Angkor period. It just wasn't that interesting to me, since I'd already spent so much time at the temples. I could have spent the entire day sitting in the central courtyard, though.
Next door is the Royal Palace. I didn't expect much here. I'm surprised anything is left of it considering Cambodia's recent history. Again I was pleasantly surprised.
I tried to get some closeups of this but I couldn't. I was shooed away by a soldier because the king was in it! I'm surprised they even allowed tourists in at all that day. Here I am with the Silver Pagoda in the background.
It gets its nickname from its floor, which is tiled in pure silver. Most of it is covered by carpet. A small section can be seen but is roped off, and it's in pretty bad shape, unfortunately. But it must have been something to see in the old days.
Several former kings and queens are buried on the palace grounds.
The streets are packed with vendors pushing carts, tourists, tuk-tuks, cyclos, etc. The city has a population of about one million. When the Khmer Rouge took over the city in April 1975 the population was about double that, as people from the countryside had fled to the city during the civil war.
(I'm sure we all remember learning about Operation Menu in school, about how, in 1969 and 1970, the US bombed Cambodia, killing as many as 600,000 civilians. The devastation helped fostered anger and resentment and a power vacuum which allowed the Khmer Rouge (KR), an unknown group even within Cambodia, to take power.)
The KR promptly emptied Phnom Penh. The entire population was forced to evacuate. This happened in all the major cities. One of the KR's nutty ideas was to turn all Cambodians into farmers. Less than four years later roughly a quarter of the population was dead, mostly from starvation. It seems you just can't wave a magic wand over a teacher or a plumber and -- poof! -- turn him into a farmer.
This is a morning market just around the corner from my guest house.
As I walked down streets like this I tried to picture what the city would have been like when it was empty. Like everything else from the KR era, it's hard to imagine. The more I read about Pol Pot and the KR the more bizarre it seems. But I'll save that for a future post, perhaps.
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