Sketches from Phnom Penh

I’ve wanted to go to Cambodia but put it off for a year because I couldn’t decide on Phnom Penh or Siem Reap or both. But, following a talk by Preetam of Caravanserai about PP, I booked a last-minute flight to PP. The cheapest I found ($230ish return) were on SQ, of all airlines. This is what I ate on the flight to PP. They had a special SG60 menu and the laksa was extremely good.

I didn’t like flying on SQ, BTW. The pilot kept interrupting my movie every 5 minutes to apologise about the turbulence and give unasked-for updates about trying to find a smoother flight path. So tedious in that performative, kancheong Sinkie civil servant way! I much prefer flying AirAsia, where the pilot flies as though drunk. Besides, the NDE makes Pak Nasser’s Nasi Lemak all the more delicious.

I picked the wrong days to go to Phnom Penh. For one thing, Phnom Penh’s Riverside walking street is only on weekends. The days I was there, it was full of traffic. Also was hoping to attend a Cambodia Palestine Solidarity event but they only occur on Thursdays and Saturdays. In any case I stayed in the guesthouse of one of their Palestine-supporting venues (US$20/night and super clean with a resident tokay gecko — heard but not seen — keeping the place pest-free).

PP is not a great place to walk around, honestly. I tried doing the usual walking-around-the-city stuff but inevitably wound up in a Brown Coffee for recovery coffee and sketching. It’s not just the traffic — there’s also a lot of construction going on. If the number of Hai Di Laos and Little Sheep Hotpots is anything to go by, it looks like the main land-grabbers here are the Chinese.

That schoolgirl knows where it’s at: the best way to get around Phnom Penh is on a scooter. I got to do that thanks to Lida, a filmmaker contact of Jason’s. Lida is so easy-going and soft-spoken, you’d never know she made a documentary about rape and forced marriage under the Khmer Rouge. Her face lights up when she talks about doing one about the Cambodians who have been deported from Thailand amidst the conflict, but there isn’t any money in this kind of work in Cambodia. Most of the NGO funding left the country during Covid and has never come back.

I wanted to know more about Cambodian history and geopolitics. The Sosoro Museum was surprisingly helpful. Indochina had a lot of shared history, but Cambodia seems chronically squeezed by the 2 bigger powers on its borders — Thailand and Vietnam — which also provide major supplies (food, petrol, goods) and jobs.

The postcolonial history of Cambodia is confusing and disturbing. After France granted Cambodia independence, Prince Sihanouk abdicated from the throne and got elected as PM immediately. Then he got ousted in a US-supported coup led by Lon Nol. To regain power, Sihanouk backed the Khmer Rouge rebels. Pol Pot took over and committed genocide, destroyed much of Cambodia’s population and resources. Then the Vietnamese invaded and Cambodia was its puppet for a while. The US withdrew funding and Khmer Rouge represented Cambodia in the UN. Huh?! I’m lost. It’s really sad to think that while the rest of us "Asian Tigers" were on the rise in the 1990s, Cambodia was still in tatters.

Cambodians still seem traumatised today. “After everything, we just want peace,” said a tuktuk driver who started chatting with me about international relations (as you do) at the entrance of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. But Cambodia doesn’t have funds or inclination to spend on their military so they keep getting invaded by their neighbours. It would be interesting to visit Siem Reap, Kampot, Battambang and the various Kampongs around Cambodia to get a sense of people’s sentiments.

I wasn’t expecting to, but I really enjoyed the random sample of Khmer food I tried at Meatophum and the Aeon food court. Maybe not so much prahok, which I had in an omelette. As a self-respecting Southeast Asian, I do have a fondness for fermented seafood; even so, I draw the line at slimy undercooked rotten fish. But I loved num banhchok — supersoft, fermented bee hoon topped with fish curry and a selection of greens. Cambodian greens really make the dish. Apart from common raw veg like cabbage, cucumber, bean sprouts and basil, I also had winged beans, raw bittergourd, green banana, green papaya, lotus stems and Sesbania flowers.

Then there was the meal that Lida, Bora (her partner) and I shared at the bombastically-named Koh Dach Beach Resort. It’s really a collection of thatch-covered bamboo jetty-huts where you can sit on a floor mat and eat a meal of freshly grilled kampong chicken (I think ours was an older cock, quite lean) and kangkong fried with giblets. There’s no waste, because mongrels surround you as soon as the chicken arrives. The canine cleanup crew take care of any bones and leftovers.

I really loved the experience. The Google Maps listing has a lot of foreigners bitching about how they got fleeced by the rural locals. But what other form of income can they earn? Lida and Bora even gave extra money to the local kids.

TL;DR: Went to Phnom Penh, didn’t get kidnapped.