Phnom Penh Information

Phnom Penh      

Phnom Penh is the largest, most populous and capital city of Cambodia. It is also the capital of the Phnom Penh municipality.

Once known as the Pearl of Asia in the 1920s, Phnom Penh is a significant global and domestic tourist destination for Cambodia. Phnom Penh is known for its traditional Khmer and French influenced architecture.

It is also the commercial, political and cultural hub of Cambodia and is home to more than 1 million of Cambodia's population of 13.8 million.


Geography

Cambodia, also known as Kampochea, is a country located in Southeast Asia that is bordered by Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand.  Covering an area of about 181,035 sq km, Cambodia is about half the size of Vietnam.  The capital of Cambodia is Phnom Penh and has the distinction of also being the largest city. 

A low-lying alluvial plain in the center of Cambodia makes up most of the country, although in the South there is the Mekong Delta.  There are several mountainous regions, one of which forms a border along the coastline with another separating Cambodia from Thailand. 

The tenth largest river in the world, the Mekong River, is the longest river in Southeast Asia and the most important river in Cambodia.  One of its important uses is that it is navigable for most of its "run" through the country, as well as the Mekong delta in the South.

Cambodia is also home to the largest lake in Southeast Asia, the Tonle Sap (Great Lake), which connects with the Mekong River in Phnom Penh.  The Tonle Sap enlarges to four times its normal size when the Mekong rises during the monsoon season thus causing the Tonle Sap River to flow northward into the Lake.

During the dry season it reverses its flow and goes back into the Mekong River.  As a result of this, The Tonle Sap Lake is a great resource for freshwater fish, actually being one of the richest sources in the world.

There are two monsoons which make up Cambodia's climate, a cool, dry, north-eastern one that is rather dry and comes from November to March and a south-western one which brings with it heavy rain, high winds and high humidity from May to early October.

December and January are considered to be the coolest months and fall in the dry monsoon season.   Annually, Cambodia gets about 1,400 mm (55 in) and the temp averages around 27 degrees C (80 degrees F).


Etymology

The city takes its name from the Wat Phnom Daun Penh (known now as just the Wat Phnom or Hill Temple), built in 1373 to house five statues of Buddha on a man made hill 27 meters high. It was named after Daun Penh (Grandma Penh), a wealthy widow.

Phnom Penh was also previously known as Krong Chaktomuk meaning "City of Four Faces". This name refers to the junction where the Mekong, Bassac, and Tonle Sap rivers cross to form an "X" where the capital is situated. Krong Chaktomuk is an abbreviation of its ceremonial name given by King Ponhea Yat which was "Krong Chaktomuk Mongkol Sakal Kampuchea Thipadei Sereythor Inthabot Borei Roth Reach Seima Maha Nokor".


History

Phnom Penh first became the capital of Cambodia in 1431 when king Ponhea Yat was forced to flee Angkor on its capture by the Thais. The remains of Ponhea Yat and other members of the royal family rest in stupas behind Wat Phnom.

The capital was moved several times after Ponhea Yat, and it was not until 1866, under the reign of King Norodom I, that Phnom Penh became the permanent seat of government and the Royal Palace(pictured) was built. This marked the beginning of the transformation of what was essentially a village into a great city with the French Colonialists expanding the canal system to control the wetlands, constructing roads and building a port.

By the 1920s Phnom Penh was known as the Pearl of Asia and over the next four decades continued to experience growth with the building of a railway to Sihanoukville and the Pochentong International Airport.

During the Vietnam War, Cambodia was used as a base by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, and thousands of refugees from across the country flooded the city to escape the fighting between their own government troops, the NVA/NLF, the South Vietnamese and its allies and the Khmer Rouge. By 1975 the population was 2,000,000, the bulk of them refugees from the fighting. The city fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17, the Cambodian New Year, and was evacuated by force, its residents being made to labor on rural farms as "new people". Tuol Svay Prey High School was taken over by Pol Pot's forces and was turned into the S-21 prison camp, where Cambodians were detained and tortured. It is estimated that one-half to two-thirds of the country's population was killed during the years Pol Pot was in power. Pol Pot desired a return to an agrarian economy and therefore killed anyone who was educated, who wore glasses, or who did not have calloused hands to cleanse the population of the taint of westernization. Many others starved to death as a result of failure of the agrarian society and the sale of Cambodia's rice to China in exchange for bullets and weaponry. Tuol Svay Prey High School is now the Tuol Sleng Museum in which Khmer Rouge torture devices and photos of their victims are displayed. Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields), 15 kilometers away, where the Khmer Rouge marched prisoners from Tuol Sleng to be murdered and buried in shallow pits, is also now a memorial to those who were killed by the regime.

The Khmer Rouge were driven out of Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese in 1979 and people began to return to the city. Vietnam is historically a state with which Cambodia conflicts, therefore this liberation was and is viewed with mixed emotions by the Cambodians. A period of reconstruction began, spurred by continuing stability of government, attracting new foreign investment and aid by countries including France, Australia, and Japan. Loans were made from the Asia Development Bank and the World Bank to reinstate a clean water supply, roads and other infrastructure. The 1998 Census put Phnom Penh's population at 862,000; by 2001 it was estimated at slightly over 1 million.


Understand

For western visitors, even those who have visited other Asian cities, Phnom Penh can be a bit of a shock. It can be very hot and (in the dry season) dusty, its infrastructure is lacking, and it is a very poor city - much poorer than, for example, Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). In the past the visitor who could not adjust to rubbish filled streets and large numbers of beggars could give Phnom Penh a miss.

But things are changing. The infrastructure is improving rapidly - fewer power outages, streets are paved, rubbish is collected more frequently - and the city retains much of the beauty that made it a Paris of the east before 1970. Beautiful wide boulevards, fine colonial architecture and a parklike riverfront with cafés and restaurants aplenty help make Phnom Penh a worthwhile destination. Not necessarily for its standard tourist sights, which are few. But as a place to relax, watch the streetlife and absorb local color Phnom Penh rates very high among Asian cities. The beggars are still there, along with a great number of street kids and kids selling tourist paraphernalia, but this is most visible in heavily touristed areas. And generally the touts and kids are less aggressive and persistent than say their Indian or Vietnamese counterparts.

Those who find themselves struggling with Phnom Penh's current state should recall the terrible times the city has been through in recent decades. In 1975 it was choked with up to 2 million refugees from the war between the then U.S.-backed government and the Khmer Rouge, and after it fell to the Khmer Rouge, it was completely emptied of civilians and allowed to crumble for the next four years. Most of the already small class of skilled professionals were murdered or driven into exile. The city fell to the Vietnamese Army in 1979, but the new Cambodian government had no money to spend on urban improvement until the peace settlement of 1992.

As Cambodia's economy has recovered a new rich class has arisen in Phnom Penh, and a crop of new hotels and restaurants has opened to accommodate them and the tourist trade; as yet however there's very little in between the extremely rich and the extremely poor. But here too there are changes in the wind; take a trip to the green-domed Sorya mall and you're transported to the consumerist world to which the emerging middle and upper classes aspire.

The free Phnom Penh Visitors Guide (available from hotels/guesthouses) contains lots of good info on Phnom Penh, including accommodation/bar/restaurant/shop details, travel & transport options, maps, etc.

Orientation

All of Phnom Penh's streets are numbered, although some major thoroughfares have names as well. The scheme is simple: odd-numbered streets run north-south, the numbers increasing as you head west from the river, and even numbers run west-east, increasing as you head south (with some exceptions, e.g. the west side of the Boeung Kak lake). House numbers, however, are quite haphazard. Don't expect houses to be numbered sequentially in a street; you might even find two completely unrelated houses with the same number in the same street.


Cause of the riots

The January 2003 riots were prompted by an article in the Cambodian Rasmei Angkor (Light of Angkor) newspaper on 18 January. The article alleged that a Thai actress, Suvanant Kongying, had said that Cambodia had stolen Angkor, and that she would not appear in Cambodia until it was returned to Thailand. The newspaper’s editor gave the source for the story as a group of Khmer nationalists who said they had seen the actress on television. No evidence to support the newspaper’s claim has ever emerged, and it seems that the report was either fabricated or arose from a misunderstanding of what Suvanan’s character had said. It has also been suggested that the report was an attempt by a rival firm to discredit the actress, who was inter alia the “face” of a cosmetics company.

The report was picked up by Khmer radio and print media, and copies of the Rasmei Angkor article were distributed in schools. On 27 January, the Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen repeated the allegations, and said that Suvanant was “not worth a few blades of grass near the temple”. On 28 January, the Cambodian government then banned all Thai television programmes in the country.

Cultural

Compared to Cambodia, Thailand has a far greater population, is much richer and is more open to
western influences. These factors have given Thailand a substantial cultural influence on Cambodia, particularly in music and television. This is coupled with a perception on the part of many Cambodians that Thais are arrogant and racist towards their neighbours, and towards Cambodians in particular.


Economic

Thailand’s rapid economic progress during the 1980s and 1990s made its economy one of the strongest in south-east Asia. Conversely, the Khmer Rouge government and the subsequent civil war kept Cambodia economically weak. As a result, Thai businesses dominate part of the Cambodian economy, fuelling resentment

The riots

On 29 January, rioters attacked the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh, destroying the building. Mobs also attacked the premises of Thai-owned businesses, including Thai Airways and Shin Corp, owned by the family of the Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. A photograph of a Cambodian man holding a burning portrait of the revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej enraged many Thai people.

The Thai government sent military aircraft to Cambodia to evacuate Thai nationals, while Thais demonstrated outside the Cambodian embassy in Bangkok.

Responsibility for the riots was disputed: Hun Sen attributed the government’s failure to prevent the attacks to “incompetence”, and said that the riots were stirred up by “extremists”. The chairman of the National Assembly, Prince Norodom Ranariddh claimed that opposition leader Sam Rainsy had directed the attacks. Rainsy said that he had attempted to prevent the violence.

In the context of the ongoing intimidation and violence instigated by Hun Sen in the run up to the 2003 elections, many believe that the riots were merely yet another of these tactics gone out of control


The aftermath

The Thai government closed the country’s border with Cambodia following the riots. The border was re-opened on 21 March 2003, following the Cambodian government’s payment of $6 million compensation for the destruction of the Thai embassy. In a 2006 rally against Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, several influential Thai diplomats, including former ambassador to the UN Asda Jayanama and former ambassador to Vietnam Supapong Jayanama, alleged that only half of the compensation was actually paid. The Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied this accusation. The Cambodian government also agreed to compensate individual Thai businesses for the losses which they had suffered, to be negotiated separately.

Shortly after the riots, a wave of arrests - more than 150 persons - was criticized by human rights groups, highlighting irregularities in the procedures and denial by the authorities to monitor their detention conditions. The owner of Beehive Radio, Mr. Mom Sonando, and Chan Sivutha, Editor-in-Chief of Reaksmei Angkor, were both arrested without warrants, charged with incitement to commit a crime, incitement to discrimination and announcement of false information. They were later on released on bail and no trial was ever made.