My Lockdown Fantasy: I Wish I Was Back in the Bustling, Mind-Blowing Beauty of Phnom Penh
I didn’t have high hopes for Phnom Penh when I arrived there on a backpacking trip in 2003, after a few days exploring the jungle temple complex of Angkor Wat and the floating villages of Tonlé Sap. I had been warned to get out of the Cambodian capital as quickly as possible and head for the coast. Almost entirely emptied of its population by the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, the city was now bouncing back as an unplanned jumble, with French colonial buildings left to rot as new development expanded outwards in an unbridled sprawl.
Yet Phnom Penh had a magnetic charm in its frenzied muddle, with dense streets of Chinese shophouses jostling for position with crumbling French mansions and heroic 1960s experiments in the New Khmer architecture of post-independence Cambodia. After interminable weeks of lockdown, it is exactly the kind of frenetic urban melee I’m longing for, to be lost in the bustle of crowds and wander for hours with no purpose other than to discover what lies around the next corner.
Click here to keep reading. Oliver Wainwright writes for The Guardian.
