The Best of Cambodia & Laos

Founded in the mid–14th century
by the Khmers as a monastery, Phnom
Penh replaced Angkor Thom, a city at the
Angkor temples, a century later as the
country’s capital. The city has long been a
vital trading hub at the confluence of three
rivers: the Mekong, Tonle Sap, and Bassac.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Phnom Penh was
considered the most beautiful city in Asia.
Wide, lazy boulevards shaded by trees and
French-built villas set among prewar Art
Deco monoliths set the city apart. In the
1960s, when war raged in Vietnam but
had yet to engulf its neighbor, Phnom
Penh was the R & R destination of choice
for those involved in the continuing horror.
Perhaps the city’s most noted period
was actually when it lay vacant; following
an eviction order from Pol Pot, the city
was deserted in a period of hours, and
almost all of Phnom Penh’s residents
moved to the countryside in 1975, not to
return until 1979 under the authority of
Vietnamese troops.
It has been a long road to the peaceful
and growing Phnom Penh of today. There
were many years of frontier-style anarchy
after the city was repopulated in 1979.
Phnom Penh
1 ORIENTATION
Today, the city is absolutely frenetic and
intense. There has been a massive increase
in vehicles and population over the last 5
years and Phnom Penh is now very much
a boomtown. In many ways, the city is
overtaking Bangkok and Manila for the
prize of having the most congested and
claustrophobic city streets in Asia. It is
smaller than either but far more unpredictable
in that everything goes in all
directions at once. Yet it was only under a
decade ago that the first traffic lights were
installed, and the first escalator in Phnom
Penh (at the Sorya Center shopping mall)
was switched on for the first time at the
end of 2001 and became in an instant
recreational attraction.
Phnom Penh enjoys its own kind of
harmony of opposites and offers visitors
peaceful moments of a sunset at riverside
as well as its dusty, motorbike-choked
labyrinthine alleys and busy markets. The
city is an incongruous cluster of crumbling
French colonials, and the central riverside
area has a pace all its own that’s great for
wandering. It is easy, although sometimes
slightly hair-raising, to get around. Expect
delays at peak hours.
CITY LAYOUT
Phnom Penh lies north to south along the Tonle Sap River and the river provides a natural
marker. Your major reference points are the Tonle Sap itself (and the Royal Palace),
Wat Phnom, Central Market, Independence Monument, and Boeung Kak Lake.
Along the river is Sisowath Quay. It is here that you will find the Royal Palace, the
ceremonial heart of the city. Just near the Palace and the National Museum is one of the
primary restaurant and cafe districts. Virtually the whole riverfront is now a series of
eateries interspersed with hotels, Internet cafes, and travel agents.
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