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Out on the river, crews of up to 80
rowers, vividly decked out in their team colours, man the boats. At
the helm a coxswain urges them on with shouts of exhortation. Sometimes
a beautiful girl, perched precariously at the prow, coordinates the
oarsmen with sinuous gestures as the boat slices its way through the
soupy brown water. The vessels themselves, made of koki wood, are up to
30m long, painted in vibrant colours and ornately decorated with symbols
of good luck and plenty.
The festival is a way for Cambodians to honor the river, their
lifeblood, as it resumes its rightful course through their country.
The fertile silt it brings benefits the rice paddies and fruit fields
all along its route. The river is home to more than 800 varieties of
fish, many of which find their way onto a typical Khmer menu.
It is my first day in Phnom Penh, and I am watching the pageant
below from the relative calm of the veranda bar at the FCC, with a
 welcome
drink in my hand. It is a pleasant 27C, and this is by far the most
comfortable time of year to come to Cambodia. The FCC is the old Foreign
Correspondents Club, in a prime riverfront location with enviable views
up and downstream.
The elegant pillared room, in cream and dark wood, cooled by ceiling
fans, is part-owned by a British expat named Anthony Alderson. Sipping a
beer while poking at his laptop, the 40-year- old entrepreneur from
Surrey tells me: 'The festival was banned for 20 years, after [the
US-sponsored dictator] Lon Nol toppled Prince Sihanouk in 1970. It was
reinstated in 1990. For many Cambodians this will be their sole visit to
Phnom Penh, like a pilgrimage to Mecca.'
Alderson has lived out here for 13 years, with his partner Kellie,
a New Zealand silk designer, and their two children. He opened his first
restaurant in Phnom Penh, a pizzeria, in 1992. It was the first pizza
parlour in the country, and he timed his opening to perfection; 22,000
UN peacekeepers had just arrived in town, with plenty of cash to spend,
and no kitchens in the homes. The pizzeria was an instant hit and gave
Alderson a taste for the hospitality business.
In 1995 he took over the management of the FCC, and turned what had been
a poorly run gin-den, dishing up filthy food, into a funky bistro
serving everyone from backpackers to ambassadors. 'Our clients then were
mainly journalists, who would drink 15 gin and tonics in the course of a
day's writing,' Alderson explains. It is now the premier stop-off for
any visitor to Phnom Penh wishing to relax, have a drink or enjoy a good
lunch or dinner.
It was lunchtime and I decided to put his cooking to the test.
Sipping an iced watermelon juice, I was impressed by the scope of the
menu. I ordered a deliciously rich and piquant goong ob woonsen " baked
prawns with glass noodles, cooked with herbs and dark soy. The seafood
in Phnom Penh is astonishingly good. The prawns were sweet and meaty,
and the noodles were the colour of mahogany. Graham Greene and Norman
Lewis, both habitus of the club in its former incarnation, would be
astonished to find that these days the food alone makes the FCC worth a
visit.
The FCC is more than just a good bar and restaurant though " it
is an institution, a meeting place and a bolt-hole of sanity, if not
always of sobriety. Keith Quinn was the US Ambassador during the coup of
1997. On 7 July that year, Hun Sen, the leader of the Cambodian People's
Party (CPP), overthrew Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh in a brutal,
bloody coup. Two days of fighting left at least 58 people dead. The coup
started on a Saturday. On Monday lunchtime Quinn filed his report to
Washington saying, 'The FCC is open; things must be returning to
normal.'
The FCC currently operates a small but comfortable hotel, with just
seven rooms. In keeping with the colonial style of the bar, the rooms
have dark wood floors, flagstone bathrooms and ceiling fans, and are
stylishly but sparsely furnished. On the walls are the stunning
panoramic photos of the river by the English photographer Paul Stewart,
another resident of Phnom Penh. All rooms have a terrace and a dramatic
view either over the river or the impressive National Museum.
Despite suffering exhaustion after a 14-hour flight from London, the
lure of the water festival was too strong to resist and I wanted
to get down in among it, to taste it, to smell it, to touch it.
On the street I was struck
by how young the population is.
More than half
of the 13 million Cambodians are under 19 years old. They are fascinated
by the sight of a 6'4', big-nosed European on their turf. Despite the
fact that Cambodia is a very easy country to enter (you buy your visa at
the airport on entry, for $25), the sight of a tourist is still
something of a novelty in Phnom Penh. 'Hello " what is your name?' they
giggle as they pass. Every once in a while, a schoolgirl, emboldened and
intoxicated by the festive atmosphere, touches my nose for luck, as if
it is a supremely holy relic sent by a foreign dignitary to honour the
festival.
Wandering away from the river, into the heart of old Phnom Penh,
the nostrils are assailed by the familiar smells of Asia " a combination
of spices, jasmine, incense, sewage and exhaust fumes. A family of five
balanced on a single motorcycle is so commonplace that it no longer
warrants the desperate scramble for the camera to record the scene. In
fact, seeing a mere three on a two-wheeler seems positively wasteful and
decadent.
Each night after the dragon races are done and darkness falls,
eight colossal illuminated barges are towed into position on the river,
to the raucous din of xylophones and gongs that blare from tinny
speakers positioned the length of the riverfront. The temperature of the
crowd rises in anticipation; some of the revelers shimmy along in a
sinewy serpentine conga line, and the end of the day is heralded by a
spectacular firework display. As the full moon rises, thunderclaps,
starbursts and rocket flares tattoo the night sky. The xylophone music
never lets up.
 
Next morning, the riverfront is all but deserted and hidden under a
humid cloud cover. The frenzy and euphoria of the preceding three days
and nights have gone and the city is returning to its workaday normality
" the ferry boats and fishermen are plying their trade on the Tonle Sap
again and the whole town is 20 decibels quieter.
Sipping a coconut and lime lassi on my balcony, I wonder how the
mass exodus had taken place last night. Driving north for my next
destination, Siem Riep, to visit the World Heritage site of Angkor Wat,
I found the answer. For every 20 people crammed into a minibus, there
were another 20 clinging to the roof, along with the motorbikes,
baskets, food and carpets they bought on the trip. They were returning
home to their villages in the far-flung provinces of Cambodia, up
towards the Thai and Laotian borders.
The drive from
Phnom Penh to Siem Reap is gently picturesque, past stilted
houses and endless verdant paddy fields, until I reach the small town of
Skoun. This stop-off is famous for one thing " the local delicacy is a
tarantula-like spider, cooked in a gloopy, sweetish sauce. A woman
approached my car with a trayful of the creatures. I was encouraged to
try one " the legs are like meaty balsa wood, the head rather crunchy.
Only the aficionado eats the abdomen.
Siem
Reap, I checked into one of the countless hotels that are
being built all over town. The road from the airport is lined with shiny
new hotels announcing 'Soft Opening " special rates'. It is beginning to
look like Las Vegas. Siem Reap is gearing up for a massive tourist
influx. With the heart-meltingly beautiful 12th- century Angkor Wat as
the jewel in its crown, there is every chance that Cambodia will soon
emulate the popularity of its neighbours Thailand and Vietnam.
The Hotel de la Paix is a swanky 105-room art deco treasure trove. Part-
Theban palace, part-ocean liner, it is the most luxurious of all the new
top-end hotels. It 'soft-opened' in July, and while it is not yet up to
speed (only one in every five of the rooms was booked during my stay),
it offers a standard of accommodation and a level of service many
Western hotels would do well to emulate.
Designed by Bill Bensley, known for his work for the Four Seasons hotel
group in Asia, the rooms are coolly modern, and come with handcrafted
lamps, intricate wall-mountings and fine linen. Every room has a DVD
player, wi-fi internet connection and an iPod that guests may take with
them on excursions.
The communal Art Lounge has a vast bar, lit by fibre optics that bathes
the room in alternating soft, soothing pink and green light. On one
wall, films are projected without sound. The exhibition of artworks
changes monthly, and always in some way reflects Khmer culture.
Pursuing the theme, the hotel's Meric Restaurant features Khmer cuisine,
cooked by the highly rated New Zealand chef Paul Hutt. Roots and tubers,
flowers, small fish, wild honeys and herbs are all traditional Khmer
foods, as well as more than 1,000 varieties of rice. At a Khmer gourmet
evening I ate steamed maan (fermented fish) with Khmer crudits, krill
(the tiny shrimp that is the staple of any discerning whale's diet) and
V C ambarella (something between a quince or crabapple) salad, and
stir-fried frog with basil. Every dish was delicious, subtly flavoured
and aromatic, and presented with real attention to detail.
Like new hotels the world over, the Hotel de la Paix sets great
store by its spa, and boasts a swimming pool, gym and a wide selection
of treatments and yoga classes. The FCC Angkor "the sister hotel to the
Phnom Penh FCC " was also a wonderfully relaxing place to stay between
visits to Angkor Wat and the other temples in the vicinity.
Recently, there has been a proliferation of boutique and luxury hotels
in Cambodia "fuelled by the demand for high living at prices that are,
by international standards, low. Chatting to Anthony Alderson in the
funky first-floor bar of the FCC Angkor that overlooks the Siem Reap
River, he told me, 'We are selling an oasis here. For $100 a night we
offer designer quality at an affordable price.'
For a few dollars more, you can try one of the treatments from the spa.
I chose the 58 Stones one, where polished black basalt stones from the
Grand Canyon are heated and placed on the muscles, then used to massage
legs and feet, back and shoulders, arms and hands, and head and neck.
The whole process takes an hour and a half, and is like being bathed
with warm honey.
The games room even has a black pool table made by the legendary
Brunswick Company in Cincinnati " '97 per cent accuracy on the
cushions,' said Alderson proudly as he cleared the table. Just my luck
to find the rogue 3 per cent while I was playing.
Next door to the FCC is the art gallery and curiosity shop owned by the
41-year-old Anglo-Irish traveller Jerry Swaffield, who arrived in
Cambodia two years ago, via Bangkok and the Philippines. He is an
illustrator by trade, and at 15 was the second-youngest artist ever to
draw for The Beano. Who was the youngest, I asked the wiry Swaffield.
'Bob sodding Monkhouse,' he replied with a wink.
As well as illustrations, Swaffield
makes 'assemblages of junk', which he refers to as 'scraptures'.
These bizarrely beautiful objects are part fetish, part totem.
Linger in Swaffield's gallery for an hour or two, and many of
the transient characters crisscrossing Cambodia will almost
certainly drop in for a coffee or a smoke. I waited a mere 40
minutes before
Peter
O'Sullivan, who had played bass guitar with my band in the 1980s, walked
into the gallery. After spending a suitably dissolute youth, Peter
became involved in the landmine clearances in Cambodia and now leads
tours with his company, Wild Frontiers, to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
Astonished to
see him after so long, and in such unfamiliar surroundings, I asked what
on earth he was doing here and he answered, 'Where else would I go "
this is the only place to be!' And, in a way, he was right.
TRAVELLER'S GUIDE
GETTING THERE
You cannot fly direct between the UK and Cambodia; the main gateways are
Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. The lowest fares are likely to be
with the national carriers: Thai (0870 606 0911; www.thaiairways.co. uk)
from Heathrow, Singapore Airlines (0870 608 8886; www.singaporeair.
co.uk) from Heathrow via Singapore, and Malaysia Airlines (0870 607
9090; www.malaysiaairlines.com) from Manchester and Heathrow.
STAYING THERE
FCC, 363 Sisowath Quay, Phnom Penh (00 855 23 210 142;
www.fcccambodia.com). Doubles start at $55 (pounds 31), including
breakfast.
Hotel de la Paix, Sivutha Boulevard, Siem Reap (00 855 63 966 000; www.
hoteldelapaixangkor.com). Doubles from $253 (pounds 141), including
breakfast.
VISITING THERE
Wild Frontiers (020-7736 3968; www.wildfrontiers.co.uk).
British passport-holders need a visa to visit Cambodia. They can be
obtained at Phnom Penh Pochentong and Siem Reap Angkor International
airports, for $25 (pounds 14). Contact the Royal Embassy of Cambodia
(020-7483 9063).
The Foreign Office (0845 850 2829; www.fco.gov.uk) advises, 'There has
been a renewed outbreak of bird flu among poultry in Cambodia. Consult
your healthcare provider for travel medical advice before departure. The
risk is believed to be very low, provided you avoid visiting live animal
markets, poultry farms and other places where you may come into close
contact with domestic, caged or wild birds; and ensure poultry and egg
dishes are thoroughly cooked.'
Tourism Cambodia (00 855 23 216 666; www.tourismcambodia.com).
Author Richard Strange Copyright Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights
Reserved.
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