New Years in Phnom Penh

December 31, 2008/January 1, 2009

Ask most people what they expect from Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia, and they would probably admit that they have never heard of it. However, this deeply historic city has seen its turn of the good and the bad. From the Khmer Rouge, to the French, to the Vietnamese. Phnom Penh is ensconced in Frenchness, with baguettes on the street and the architecture to match. It is also surrounded by reminders, mainly through the citizens that lived through it, of the terrible reign of the Khmer Rouge and the uncertainty thereafter their downfall.

The city is riddled with motobike taxis and tuk tuks, beckoning for your service. The food, diverse as it is plentiful, marks a welcome change to the street food of Bangkok, though you pay much more for it. Guesthouses are cheap, at 3-6 dollars a night.

I spent New Year's Eve in Phnom Penh. After a $2 haircut and some beers with a street vendor, it was just a matter of following the crowd. Dancing in a club full of lights and the smiles of foreiners and locals.

The next day, however, was much darker, with trips to the Killing Fields and Tulong Sleng, a former Khmer Rouge prison. Just how this culture, this society, has survived an onlslaught of foreign invaders, a genocide unmatched in paranoia and terror (and international silence and knowledge) and a generally economically poor people, is puzzling.

The only thing that goes farther down the road of wonderment, is the enchantment of the Khmer smile, which lights the faces of Cambodia as bright as the blazing sun.