Valentines Day and our last day to be in Phnom Penh.  Lisa scheduled a last minute architectural tour wanting to see the French Colonial buildings that dot the area around our hotel.  Our guide named Votey, who speaks excellent non-Khmer-glish English, shows up to the hotel to greet us. Votey is an architect but gave up her career to study and teach idiots like us about Cambodian architecture. The tour is provided by the Khmer Architecture Organization. This is not a typical architecture tour.  No, this is a tour using cyclos.  Cyclos are rickshaw bicycles and there are three of them lined up in the front of hotel, one for Lisa, one for me and one for Vetoy along with the three cyclo pedalists standing at attention.  (This is Votey below)

It’s 8am and you have to get started early to avoid the heat that starts to set in late morning.  Off we go. For a communist country, I have to say this all seems very bourgeois elitist having a peasant pedal you around town.  Take that back, it absolutely IS bourgeois elitist.  So much for egalitarianism. After all that war, death and destruction, I guess the Cambodian People’s Party realized people needed to eat.

(Here are the bourgeoisie being cycloed around town by peasants in a Communist country, just as Marx anticipated.)

We hit the main French Colonial buildings as promised, such as the post office.  Still in use today (except it seems like it’s more 1940ish than 2024ish) the post office is a beautiful early 20th French colonial design that is now marred by numerous signs and ATMs. The one element they did seem to preserve is the building has no air conditioning. It’s about 99 degrees. In February. How authentic!

We then head across the street to what was the Hotel de la Poste and here’s where things get a little interesting.  In 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge overthrew the government.  Though educated and wealthy himself, he headed up a communist agrarian revolt and had 90% of the educated, intellects, wealthy folks (except the royalty), and anyone who looked like any of the above, murdered ( including people whose only crime was that they wore glasses and I can personally attest that wearing glasses is no indication of intellect—it just means you can’t see anything).  Most of these folks lived in Phnom Penh so in order to carry out the mission, he ordered everyone to leave Phnom Penh. Everyone!  This is a huge city.  This would be like telling everyone in Detroit to leave and go live in the countryside NOW! (Hey, maybe not a bad idea after all . Note, I’ve never been to Detroit for the record so my apologies to the offended for the snarky comparison).  After three years in 1979, the Viet Cong in a supposed border dispute (both sides still blame the other) invaded Cambodia, overthrew the Khmer Rouge, put Pot under house arrest and stopped the killing.  When the Viet Cong got to Phnom Penh, they found no one living there so being the good Communists that they were, they incentivized the fled Phnom Penhites (Penhians?) and others to move back to the city and claim whatever real estate they wanted.  A lot of folks moved back into their old houses, but those without old houses looked for somewhere to live. One by one, the individual rooms were claimed by poor folks. The hotel was inhabited room by room by those families and many of them and their offspring still live there today. I’m talking about whole families living in one old hotel room that hasn’t changed since the 1960’s.  It’s the poorest of the poor and when we went up into the building to see the architecture of the hotel, we could look into these rooms.  Beds, TVs, kitchens all in one room.  No furniture to speak of with little children running around and people sitting around on the floors.  We also went to an historic cathedral where the same thing happened. The communists no longer allowed religion so the church was divided into several small rooms and families are still living there today.  They are poorer than anything you can see in the States, but this bag I saw outside one of the hovel rooms had me wondering??? What’s really going on?

 The tour also featured a detour through Chinatown and to a Chinese Buddhist Temple. I’m sure the architecture was important but the whole thing reminded me of a casino with flashing lights, incense, lots of incense, and action figures.

We left Temple Action Figures and went to the market and train station to see examples of Art Deco. The market building is huge and stunning. The wet market surrounds the building on the outside and if you had to imagine what a wet market looks and smells like, you’d be correct. I prefer my Whole Foods wet market. The inside is massive and filled massively with junk to buy. On the other hand, the train station is small and there is only one train that leaves from it. The government at one time had a vision for making it into a high end mall. There were faded images and signs for Gucci and Gucci like retailers painted on the walls where shops were supposed to go. The requested bribes must have been too high because it never materialized.

Phnom Penh’s main market.

After about 3 hours the tour was over and I am certain the cyclo drivers were happy it was, too, with the temperatures reaching in the high 90’s by late morning.  They probably made about $2 each.  Not sure what you can buy at Whole Foods for $2. Maybe a jalapeño or two?

Sadly our wonderful stay at Raffles Hotel Le Royal was coming to an end.    To me, Phnom Phen is a mixed bag.  On one hand, the people are warm and sincere and there’s a frenetic in your face energy to it that I was drawn to.  On the other, the corruption in government is so apparent and appalling that no matter how many advancements the people make, they will be held back.  The tragic recent history of the city still casts a pall over it.  The genocide touched everyone and there are still plenty of people alive who were witnesses to it.  We didn’t have to see the Genocide Museum or go to the killing fields to understand that.  People we met spoke openly about it, how it impacted the city and their families.  It’s unfathomable that such a thing could happen in Cambodia. The Cambodian people are among the gentlest and kindest you’ll find on this planet. Their deep fundamental Buddhist faith I am convinced makes them that way. Maybe it’s a cultural reaction to decades of war and brutality. It’s hard to say what moves a collective of people to share a genuine kindness trait.

While being a mixed bag for me, Phnom Penh touches people in a way that is difficult to explain and would require a lot more time to discover.  We ran into a woman in her late thirties and her aunt.  The woman worked for the Clinton Health Access Initiative and ran the malaria eradication section.  She was there for a conference. They were both British but lived in the States.  She lives outside Boston now, but had lived in Phnom Penh for four years before going back to the US.  We happened to be headed to the same rooftop bar (of course that’s what we’re doing), one of many in Phnom Penh, and met them on the street. We had a drink together and as she looked out over over Phnom Penh, she said the city had touched her like no other place and how grateful she was that her job brought her back even for a short time. You could tell by her look staring out unfocused on any one building, one tuk-tuk, one person, that so many fond memories of the place were streaming through her consciousness.  It was noting to see that and makes me believe three days didn’t even scratch the surface. On the flip side, all I was thinking about was my last Raffles breakfast buffet, for which I, too, will shed a tear, when we leave.  Tomorrow, it’s off to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat!