Phnom Penh City: Faded but preserved

By Tom Cockrem
The Malaysian Star Online

Once touted as “the Paris of the East”, Phnom Penh was wracked by social upheavel for decades on end. Now it’s finally bouncing back.

With its broad, tree-lined boulevards, spruce colonial villas and riverfront promenade, Phnom Penh in the early 20th century was touted as “The Paris of the East”. A French colonial outpost, it was styled to be that way.

Since then, however, the city has been tortured — almost to extinction in the 70s under the murderous Khmer Rouge.

Its old colonial grandeur, though, still manages to come through, albeit in patches, and in wildly varying states of world-weary grace and disrepair. Phnom Penh now is quite secure. And it’s fun to walk its streets, tracking down the relics of a not-so-distant past.

Phnom Penh’s colonial grandeur still manages to come through.

The old houses certainly are there. Most are double-storey places, with their mustard square facades framed by shrubbery and palms. They sport portentous-looking archways and neo-classical columns, the mandatory shutters, stucco decorations and roofs of “fish-scale” tiles.

Some are all but derelict. Others have been faithfully restored and today house embassies and banks. Some house local families — squatters, tenants, or their actual owners, who would know? Still more belong to temples, and serve as halls of residence for the monks.

Phnom Penh’s colonial precinct was largely confined to the north — north of the French-built “New” or “Central” Market, that is.

Wat Saravann in Phnom Penh. — TOM COCKREM

The south was reserved for the Khmers. Their wooden stilt houses are nearly all gone now. However, they are still to be seen where there’s water, especially round the edges of the Boeng Kak Lake. The Chinese got the town’s commercial centre. There they made their shophouses — solid double-storey places, narrow at the front but up to 40m deep. They still retain them. The French, of course, departed long ago, leaving for posterity their stately municipal buildings and homes.

They also left their colleges. Once the preserve of the elite, they are now given over to the general population and are still used as schools. It’s great to see so many local youngsters in attendance, sporting gleaming smiles and uniforms to match.

The classrooms are ridiculously outmoded. Facilities rarely extend beyond a white-board and desks. Their great clumsy shutters are anachronisms, too. Aesthetically, sure, the old colleges are great. As places of learning, however, they fall drastically short.

Still, the kids don’t seem to care, if their enthusiastic numbers are anything to go by.

The city’s riverfront — once the French colonial showpiece of Phnom Penh — is now a showcase once again of trendy international restaurants and bars. An institution among these is the FCC — the Foreign Correspondents Club. It’s housed in a grand old, three-storey, colonial-style building.

This is an expat scene whose easy laid-back atmosphere is a barometer of the extent to which the city’s citizens have in recent times been able to lower their guard.

Ten years ago conversations here would inevitably have gravitated to issues such as personal security and the worrying profusion of guns. Now it’s more the cost of an apartment, setting up a business or the extension of your visa.

Nearby is the wondrous Royal Palace. Inspired by Bangkok’s Grand Palace, it was built by King Norodom in 1970. Finance and architectural assistance came courtesy of the French.

Pride of the compound is the sumptuous Silver Pagoda, named for the 5,000 pure silver tiles that constitute its floor. The pagoda contains a wealth of ancient treasures — a 17th century crystal Buddha, bejewelled masks, chalices and urns, plus a 90kg solid gold Buddha studded with diamonds.

Fronting the palace is the Throne Hall, where the royal celestial angels — the tiara-crowned apsaras — once danced for foreign dignitaries and for the pleasure of the king.

Next door is the palatial terracotta-fronted National Museum. In both essence and form, it was built by the first person to be born in Cambodia of French parents. This was George Groslier, who was also the museum’s first curator.

He set assiduously about the task of stocking his masterwork with the most venerated treasures from ancient Angkor and beyond, and was personally instrumental in the recovery of countless stolen works of art.

Phnom Penh now is well and truly back on its feet. Confidence is back. Its streets buzz with Hondas going every way but straight. It’s a comically chaotic place, unambiguously congenial and charmingly off-beat. This is a town where the East — in its most essential form — was suddenly confronted by a most determinedly sophisticated West in the guise of the French.

The Phnom Penh you see today is very much a product of this very odd encounter. And its heritage, colonial and indigenous, has squarely earned the right to be preserved.