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Phnom Penh
Cambodia
Angkor...
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Phnom Penh, Phnom
Penh airport, Phnom
Penh Angkor, Phnom Penh
Cambodia, Phnom Penh
Cambodia hotel,
Phnom Penh Cambodia
hotels.
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-Phnom Penh is the
Cambodian capital between three rivers: the Bassac, the Tonle
Sap and the Mekong.
The city is the major
economic, cultural, tourist, and historical center of
Cambodia today. Phnom Penh has more than one million
inhabitants. actually its not very clear how many, that is
similar to Thailand where also nobody really knows who many
people live in
Bangkok. The name
of the city came from the hill temple
-Wat Phnom Daun Penh- but later it was changed to Daun Penh,
a woman who was a rich widow at that time, also referred as
Grandma Penh which lived on the west side of the river.
Legend tells that in the rainy season of 1372, many Koki
trees were floating down the river and in one of the tree
some holes were found with bronze Buddha statues hidden inside.
Daun Penh built a temple using the Koki tree trunks who hold
the five Buddha statues. The temple was called Wat Phnom Daun
Penh and, in the end, the city got the name Phnom Penh. Today
Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia and the largest city in
the country with plenty of attractions, the city has the main
Cambodian Airport with plenty of connection to other Asia cities
such as Singapore,
Bangkok
and other destinations. Its is possible to come in by bus from
Bangkok where the bus is changed at the Thai Cambodian border,
after driving to Siem Reap and further on. A other very
interesting route is from Bangkok to Trat, maybe having a trip
to Koh
Chang and crossing the border into Cambodia a couple of
kilometers behind Trat Thailand
at Koh Kong, by ferry (about 4
hours) or taxi (about 6 hours) to
Sihanoukville
and after to the
capital.
One of the city attractions of rather resent times is
the Royal Palace built with the help of the French
colonialists in 1866. The Royal Palace at Phnom Penh has a Khmer
architectural style and is the official residence of the king of
Cambodia. Most part of the palace is open to the public but the king's residential
quarters are closed to the public.
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The Temple of
the Emerald Buddha which is also called the Silver Pagoda
was reconstructed in 1962. This
Buddhist temple has a 90 kg gold Buddha statue,
and other
Buddha
statues plus a floor consisting of over 5000 silver tiles.
Don't expose knees or shoulders in the temple
as this is considered to be disrespectful. Wat Phnom
Pagoda was constructed in 1373 and enshrines four Buddha hairs.
The National Library of Cambodia is close to Wat
Phnom, with a French Colonial architectural, built in 1924.
-The formerly elegant
Cambodian capital Phnom Penh is slowly reemerging as a Asian
metropolis, but good life comes back slowly.
Tourists from all over the world in
particular Europeans flying into the capital of Cambodia and
Siem Reap
-Angkor Wat in
droves to visit the old Cambodian Temple,
Monuments and Pagodas, everyone knows Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
New Cambodian hotels and restored old ones
with the typical French architecture style elements are
plenty, some expensive, some not so, its easy to find a hotel
for every taste and budget in Cambodia, nightlife is up and
running every evening but if you are a night freak better try
Phuket
nightlife or
Thailand nightlife in general a bit further to the west. The bad times of Cambodia are slowly
vanishing into a remote distance and a more modern life takes
over, but very slowly. Cambodian and US rap wobble out of
totally overturned loudspeaker, sometimes in between - some
Cambodian love songs. The Toyotas are roaring blasting their
diesel smoke into the already not very clean air. Many excellent
-in- Restaurants are running on full load every evening and
there is a optimistic and swinging atmosphere in the capital of
Cambodia. It is now at peace, and attention can
finally turn to having a good life.
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The
central market in the city is the usual mixture of a
Asian market, wet market, souvenir market etc. you can
find plenty of native handicrafts and other interesting
things, markets mea, go shopping. Its similar to the
Bogyoke Market in Yangon, the central market in Kuala
Lumpur Chinatown and night markets in Bangkok, Phuket
and elsewhere in the region. |
Central market
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Inside central market |
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-View
from Phnom Penh
In April 1967, Lee Kwan
Yew was invited to Cambodia by Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk.
Cruising along the capital's elegant boulevards in his Mercedes
convertible, the Singaporean premier turned to his host and mused, 'I
hope, one day, my city will |
Night view |
look like this'.Eight years after Lee's visit,
the city
lay charred and abandoned Khmer Rouge soldiers had dynamited the
National Bank and cathedral.
The Art Deco Bibliotheque became a
makeshift kitchen for
Chinese advisers to Pol Pot staying at a decrepit
Hotel Le Royal next door. Books were used as firewood. Pigs and chickens
roamed its corridors.
Today Cambodia is finally
at peace and the capital is undergoing a remarkable transformation. Roads are being
re-paved, colonial villas repainted and fountains turned back on after
28 years. And, while belated, |
Buddhist temple with some interesting
Buddhist art. 
Ladder wagon transport Cambodia |
the rich architectural legacy that survived
the wars is beginning to attract the attention it deserves, as well as
considerable concern. At the heart of the tourist agenda is the Royal Palace and the
great National Museum next door, which
houses the best collection of antiquity from Angkor's temples outside
the Musee Guimet in Paris. George Groslier's 1920 masterpiece of
Khmer-French architecture boasts a vast angled terracotta-colored roof
supported by massive teak beams.
-Lovers of Art Deco
can choose Hotel Le Royal, the nerve
centre of war correspondents pre- Pol Pot, since lavishly restored by
the Raffles hotel chain. Phnom Penh's cathedral is lost for ever, but
along the same quiet tree-lined street where it once stood are numerous
handsome colonial edifices all hardly changed in 50 years, along with
the railway station, the ochre bank and post office, not to mention the
archives and a reinvigorated Bibliotheque (sans cochons).
For me, however,
Phnom Penh's real
architectural legacy is not colonial but Modernist, fusing postwar
French trends (and a celebratory use of concrete) with the indigenous
motifs of
Angkorian antiquity.
Called 'New Khmer Architecture', the
unique hybrid flourished over the decade and a half following the end of
French rule in 1953, but ended abruptly with the coup that deposed
Sihanouk in 1970 and led ultimately to 30 years of civil war.
-The architect responsible for
the majority of these structures is 78-year-old Vann Molyvann. |
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The first Cambodian to be trained in Europe, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in
Paris, he came directly under the influence of Le Corbusier. Vann
Molyvann used the Modulor in during the 1960s, enlisting the
services of engineer Vladimir Bodiansky and the town planner Henning,
both of whom provided technical assistance to the UN during the period.
But the essence of his style |
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Cambodia Sothearos Blvd. Cambodia national assembly |
comes, he
insists, from Angkor Wat and Khmer antiquity, his own
architectural heritage. He was to Sihanouk as
Christopher Wren was to Charles II or Shusiev to Stalin. The
prince and his leading architect planned well over 100 projects
as part of an ambitious urban renewal program aimed at dragging
Cambodia out of the political backwater, while simultaneously
proclaiming the
country's newfound
self-confidence and
sovereignty. |
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Examples are
liberally scattered around
the city, however, the
most obvious symbol of this
new national identity is the
Independence Monument that
stands defiantly on Norodom
Boulevard, the broad
thoroughfare that joins the
old colonial section to the
modern zone developed during
the '60s. Directly emulating
the Arc de Triomphe, the
chocolate-hued structure is,
appropriately enough,
surrounded by a profusion of
nagas, the mythical
protective snakes and kbach,
or
Khmer
ornaments. On the
same street, set back from the road in formal gardens, is a
compound of cool, low-slung concrete and brick pavilions with
quirky zigzag roof lines, elevated
Angkor Wat
walkways and
rhythmical symmetrical doorways suggestive of Ta Phrom and
Preah Khan temples.
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Created as a Cambodian state palace, the
complex functions today as
the Senate and is accessible
to the public when the
government is not in
session. Similarly elegant
is the riverside Bassac
Theatre, a brown brick and
concrete structure, with a
foyer designed as a series
of large triangles suspended
above shallow pools of water
and cantilevered staircases.
Diamond patterned red, black
and white tiles add splashes
of color, while louvred
ventilation provides light
and air. Sadly, the
auditorium was gutted by
fire in 1994, forcing
performers to move
downstream to the Chaktomuk
Theatre at the point where
the Mekong, Tonle and Bassac
rivers |
converge. Conceived
in 1961 as a Buddhist
conference hall, the
fan-shaped building deploys,
once again, triangles and
zigzags as unifying motifs. |
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The
80 000-seat National Sports Complex, which opened
concurrently with Kenzo Tange's more famous stadium in Tokyo in
1966, is perhaps the strongest statement about friendship
between nations and hosted the Asian Games of the same year.
Besides the four vast concrete towers, the stadium has a
stunning cantilevered roof and large ornamental pools that
directly imitate the barays, or traditional reservoirs of Angkor
Wat.
More
allusions to Khmer antiquity can be found at the School of
Foreign Languages on Pochentong Boulevard, where another naga-protected
walkway leads the visitors over |
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barays of water. To one side is a tiny
circular library of ribbed concrete. Vann Molyvann recently became the subject of
a major study, Building Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture 1953-1970, by
ARK (Architectural Research Khmer), a group comprising architect Hok
Sokol, art historian Darryl Collins and the architect-urbanist Helen
Grant Ross. Due to be published this year, one of its aims is the
creation of an inventory of all Cambodian architecture from the period.
Vann Molyvann, Collins asserts, was not alone but merely the greatest
and most prolific of a group of architects working in his employ, most
of whom died during the civil wars. A good example is perhaps the Chenla,
Lu Ban Hap's eccentric, abstract theatre where Sihanouk hosted his
so-called international film festivals.
But ARK has major concerns, the
main one being that Cambodian architectural students have little
knowledge of the creative flowering following independence.
(Ironically, when so much of modern Cambodian identity is
subsumed by the
overwhelming power of
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Angkor and the
Angkorian
empire on the national psyche).
As a result,
neglect, botched
restorations and
inadvertent
destruction are
still serious
threats to the
survival of
twentieth-century
buildings. Many
renovations are
neither up to
standard nor
conducted
transparently. The
Bassac Theatre
remains in a state
of suspended
animation, while
officials at the
Ministry of Culture
fight over the money
needed to restore
it. The Chenla has
been annexed by an
ugly, circular
restaurant. The
restoration of the
Sports Complex was
handed over to a
Taiwanese company so
that the perimeter
could be developed
with commercial
outlets. Results
were poor and served
only to suffocate
this once imposingly
voluminous space.
More responsive and
imaginative
approaches are
greatly needed, so
that this
distinctive period
of Indo-Chinese
Modernism can be
truly appreciated
once more.
Architectural
Review, The, by
Robert Turnbull
COPYRIGHT EMAP
Architecture & Gale
Group |
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Phnom Penh - Capital of Cambodia |
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