|
 |
|
|
|
Scenes
from Phnom Penh |
PHNOM
PENH
City of Loss
Tuol Sleng Museum
We've come to Phnom Penh in the hot dry season, when Cambodia
is notoriously furnacelike. Even the shade provides little relief;
it's impossible to walk more than a few steps without being
covered in dust and sweat. Cyclists wear masks and scarves to
filter out the omnipresent dust clouds; men drag huge blocks
of ice down the street to stalls where they are sawed into pieces
and sold. This was the season when the Khmer Rouge swept into
power in 1975.
 |
Neither
Adam nor I have ever been to Cambodia, and we're immediately struck
by the dilapidation of the capital. Outside of a few main streets,
the roads are unpaved. Whole families live on the sidewalks --
or more accurately, what is left of the sidewalks. I've heard
that they've come from the provinces to look for work during the
dry season when farming is impossible. A few remnants of Cambodia's
colonial past survive in the ornately molded villas that line
the boulevards. But the wide once-grassy dividers that mark the
broad French-style thoroughfares are brown and strewn with trash.
There are only a couple of traffic lights in the whole city. The
motorcycles and bicycles flow in great unguided swirls and eddies,
their riders demonstrating a mixture of patience, perseverance
and will. There are very few streetlights: When the sun sets,
the dim streets are illuminated mostly by the cooking fires that
dot the city.
 |
Phnom
Penh has at least one strange reminder of Cambodia's violent past.
In the middle of a traffic roundabout is a giant statue of a perfectly
detailed black handgun, tilted up on its handle so the barrel
points into the air. It was molded from the metal of confiscated
weapons, and Prime Minister Hun Sen is said to have donated his
own gold-plated pistol to the mix. The monument is supposed to
represent the new peace, but as you can only discern from up close
that the chamber of the gun has been tied in a knot, the effect
of the huge gun is oddly disturbing, at once silly and threatening.
It feels like a warning of the hundreds of thousands of weapons
that are still out there, accumulated over 30 years of civil war,
ready to explode when you least expect it.
NEXT:
PHNOM PENH: Tuol Sleng Museum
PREVIOUS: Introduction
back
to top
|
|
|
|
