Phnomenal Penh

We booked our flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh with Qatar for a touch of affordable luxury. It turned out they use the goat cart plane for that trip. Oh well. 

My initial impression is that this is way more like India without the incessant honking, or maybe more like parts of Thailand. Definitely grimier and more down at heel than Ho Chi Minh City. Tuk tuk drivers are waiting at the airport and lining the streets calling you to go on a tour with them. Tuk tuks here are cleaner than in India and some have potted plants on the dash. Taxis and private cars often have plush carpet on the dash. Then there are remorques (pronounced reh-morks) that are canopied carriages pulled by motorcycles. Sometimes they rig them up like the Batmobile. Street crossing is easy and civilized, much like in Ho Chi Minh City. 

The architecture of Phnom Penh is something else! Buddhist design influence is everywhere. Grand gold and red glittering temple complexes decorated up the yin yang and even simple homes heading in from the airport have the flared and iridescent temple style roofs. Art deco buildings are next to art nouveau, French Versailles styling, modern graphic with elaborate murals and sensuous organic flowing forms next door. Their architecture contains surprising curves that bring to mind their Khmer script. It’s a delight to the eye. They clearly have a strong appreciation for beauty and design. Then there are the huge skyscrapers the Chinese built before COVID that stand mostly empty. Dark windowed pillars blotting out the sky with elaborate rooftop LED shows hoping to lure people to empty skybars. The Nagaland Casino has LED lights built into it so the walls become a light show. It’s all pretty to watch from up high, but alienating too, with most of the windows being dark.

There are multiple large markets here. The Russian market was our first one. There is stall after stall of souvenir trinkets, t-shirts, clothes, knock off bags, shoes, silk scarves and shawls, silver jewelry, much like all the markets we would see, plus a sizeable hardware section and then there is the sadist section full of fish and animals dead or alive or a bit of both. I can smell it and keep running into it with misplaced turns. Apparently this used to be full of Russian dolls and trinkets but I see no evidence of that. The Night Market along the river seems to be a big shopping and eating place for locals. People are buying tiny Cambodian sized clothes and shoes here before sitting down on mats with food from the stalls. The Central Market is in a big art deco building with a centre part selling silver and gemstones and fancier clothes in the wings out from there. If you are looking for a silk brocade suit coat, that’s your place. 

Remarkably, every public bathroom we have seen, including in the markets, is immaculate. 

The streets are full of bareheaded, sandalled monks in their saffron robes, with or without their parasols and definitely with their phones.

Cambodians were animists way back, until India introduced Hinduism and Buddhism. People routinely practice all three, so I am back in the land of elaborate spirit houses where fruits and incense are left for the ancestors.

I love it when the monks ring the temple bells and a million dogs howl and bark in unison. Monks and dogs go together here. Dogs are safe and fed at monasteries so they often congregate there and the monk boys play with them. When it’s time to chant, the dogs go in the temples and nap while the monks chant. Apparently there are more than 7,000 temples in Cambodia.

There seem to be a lot of deaf people in public life. I don’t know if that means there is a higher deaf population or if there is a scheme that assists them, making them more visible as business owners. There are also a lot of people with missing limbs and other land mine injuries. Cambodia was heavily mined by different parties over the decades and it is a big problem. Stay on the pavement or currently heavily trafficked path! I’ll tell you about a solution they are using when we get to Siem Reap.

There are a vast amount of charities running businesses. Many of the coffee shops, restaurants and artisan shops claim to be training Cambodian youth in these services. If you want to feel good about where your money goes, Cambodia is a good spot for that. We headed to Daughters of Cambodia, a charity that re-trains women and girls who were trafficked or sex workers. They have a lovely shop of their creations, a place where you can see them making the jewelry, a salon where I had a mani-pedi and foot massage, and a café. Their motto is “people are not for sale.”

We wandered over to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, where the king was in residence. We hung out in the Royal Palace until it was time for him to come over and pray. The buildings have been restored after the war, since Pol Pot destroyed many of them. After the Khmer Rouge, but during the civil war, people set up temporary houses and lived in the palace complex. One display case has the uniforms of the King’s personal bodyguards and they were so vibrantly coloured I swear they were the Beatle costumes for Sgt. Pepper. Our guide wasn’t familiar with that Beatles incarnation.

For a lark we did the sunset cruise with unlimited beer. The brand of unlimited beer? Krud. I kid you not, and it wasn’t terrible. 4 rivers meet at Phnom Penh, including the Mekong, and this cruise moved us around through all four. We cruised past glittery temples and empty towers, fishing villages and ferry boats while pop music covers blared with male vocalists replacing the usual female vocalists. Riverside time is always pleasant.

Cambodians seem easy going and friendly, much like the Vietnamese. They talk very matter of factly about the difficult things in their past but don’t linger on them. I find them to be solid, creative, pleasant people with whom to hang out.

And food, I still need to write about food…