Bounce back in Cambodia's step

Letter From Phnom Penh

BY RAFAEL D. FRANKEL, UPI Correspondent

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—The Asean summit here was supposed to be Cambodia’s, and Phnom Penh’s, coming out party. After years of rebuilding following the devastation, and complete emptying of the city by the Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh would finally be in the spotlight for a good reason.

And indeed, Phnom Penh has come out. But not because of the newly paved roads, the Christmas lights which adorned the trees lining the wide boulevards; not because of the new stop lights (a gift from the Chinese), which traffic actually obeys unlike more developed cities in Southeast Asia such as Bangkok; and not because of the beautiful riverfront, complete with a few swanky cafes and a stunning Foreign Correspondents Club.

The reason Phnom Penh is back as a city is because, as one of my motorcycle taxi drivers told me in broken, but effective English, “It’s annoying having Asean here. The roads are blocked, and many people can’t get to work.” As was so aptly put by him, though he probably didn’t realize it, people here have things to do, places to go, people to see. And that includes him, a 23-year-old university student who supports himself and his studies by driving his bike taxi on his down time.

To put it simply, Phnom Penh is bustling again. The central market—a kind of pentagonal-hexagonal (it was hard to discern exactly how many sides it had) building in the middle of the main traffic circle in town—is selling everything from soap, to delectable tropical fruits, to chickens.

Incidentally, those chickens arrived most unorthodoxly. Just as I pulled up to the market, so did the motorbike driver who had strapped two dozen live chickens by their feet on all sides of the back of his bike employing an elaborate tying technique which used twine and chicken wire.

In one part of town, a whole block of money changers does a brisk business exchanging whatever you have in your pockets to whatever currency they have in their glass boxes they rest their elbows on at all times. By my count, at least twenty-two different currencies were in stock at the place I changed my money. And they are the people to see, with better rates, shorter lines, and no passport presentation required.

There are a few reasons the city is moving again, but they all stem from one very simple fact: the violence, for the most part, is gone. Is it completely safe to walk the streets alone at night? No. The unconfirmed word on the street is that the first night the current U.S. ambassador was in town, he took his wife on a walk just outside the embassy compound. They were robbed. But is there a city in the Western world where that cannot happen?

In reality, most of the crime here these days amounts to daring purse snatches at high speeds. “What you get are these bandits who drive their motorcycles up to you while you’re riding, they match your speed, and if your purse or briefcase is exposed, they’ll yank it from you,” said David Kihara, an American who has lived in Phnom Penh for nearly two years working at the Cambodia Daily newspaper. “What that does is give you a choice. If you choose to hold on to your bag, you’re going down, and you’re in a lot of pain. Otherwise you let go, and they get your bag.”

Let’s get it straight though. The lesson isn’t to avoid Phnom Penh, but rather to keep your bag between you and the driver sitting in front you. That way, there’s nothing for the intrepid thieves to grab a hold of.

The most amazing thing about the sharp decline in violence is how it came about. Starting around four years ago, the government asked the people of Cambodia to turn in their guns. Lo and behold, most of them did! So in four years, the streets of Phnom Penh, along with Cambodia’s other main cities like Battambang, Siem Reap (home of the 10th to 12th century ruins of Angkor Wat), and Kampot, went from running gun battles at night to a few mugging incidents.

“The change really is dramatic,” one NGO worker told me last year when I visited Battambang, Cambodia’s third largest city and the capital of a northwestern province. “When I first got here ten years ago, as soon as the sun went down, you could hear the gun fire start. Now, we go out at night and enjoy a beer by the river,” he said, puffing peacefully on a cigarette at a riverside café (“Café” meaning a woman with a portable beer cart who sets up 20 metal chairs around five collapsible tables every late afternoon).

To be sure, not all of Cambodia’s dark side has disappeared. The illicit sex trade is still a booming business. At some markets in town—yes, though I cringe to use it, “markets” really is the best word to describe them—virgins of varying ages can be purchased for about $500, then sold back once used for $250. After that, one English teacher in Phnom Penh told me, they are “stitched up, and sold again.”

I didn’t see this market, though. And it must be said that sexual exploitation of this magnitude—especially in this part of the world—is not a uniquely Cambodian trait.

©2002 United Press International