Phnom Penh met us with festive crowds and street congestion of cars and motorcycles chock-full of young families, typical for an Asian city on the rise. We settled into our $40 boutique hotel/organic restaurant run by a Franco-Russian couple--the explosion of good mid-range hotels and fancy restaurants is a development of the past several years.
After the relative austerity of Vietnam's Buddhist temples, the gleaming white stupas of Phnom Penh's medieval wats (temples) and the golden splendor of its newer temples was striking. Religious practice seemed back in full force after having been almost wiped out in the Pol Pot days. I walked into a sermon given by the head of Cambodia's Buddhist church which was being recorded for television, and also happened upon many young people praying before colorful, neon-lit altars, such as the student honoring (what my book described as) the special deity of academics in the picture.
Another highlight in my walk around the city included a few late nineteenth-century French buildings--the remnants of a small colonial presence--set around a pleasant green square. All in all, it was a full 1 1/2 days (even without a visit to the Royal Palace, pictured at the top, which was closed for the holidays). Yet, Phnom Penh left me with the impression of a city that, while rapidly growing and developing, had lost its essence somewhere in its tragic history, so that it was hard to understand what the city was like besides a few disconnected though interesting sights.
It remains a city plagued with safety problems, such as violent purse snatchings and theft (Misha's expensive cell phone was stolen out of his bag in a fancy cafe and the thief called me from his number dozens of times, trying to extort money for the SIM card.)
On the very night that I was there, the last day of the festival of lights, tragedy struck when over 300 people were killed in a stampede resulting from poor crowd control. I was struck by the waiter at my hotel telling me this with a smile the following morning--not the Western smile of (often formal) greeting or simple good cheer, but the Asian one of extreme discomfort and politeness towards guests.
The Prime Minister, Hun Sen, himself a former member of the Khmer Rouge, said it was the worst death toll the country had experienced since Pol Pot--a reminder for me (as if my visit to the harrowing Tuol Sleng prison where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed their victims, with its traumatized guides who had been through hell themselves, was not enough) that Cambodia is not just another quickly developing Asian country.
The Prime Minister, Hun Sen, himself a former member of the Khmer Rouge, said it was the worst death toll the country had experienced since Pol Pot--a reminder for me (as if my visit to the harrowing Tuol Sleng prison where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed their victims, with its traumatized guides who had been through hell themselves, was not enough) that Cambodia is not just another quickly developing Asian country.
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