De-rustification
Nov 5th, 2007 by Jinja
“Plus ca change, in some ways, but yes, the city has become a teeming metropolis, which it never was before. “… “I miss the almost somnambulistic Provencal quality that the town had in the 1960s, when Phnom Penh was probably the prettiest city in Southeast Asia.”
Go and read the full interview at New Mandala: Link
New buildings are sprouting like mushrooms, but you can still find oxcarts ambling down Monivong or Street 178 selling clay pots. I give it another year before they’re banned. When the building boom/housing bubble will pop? One can only wonder.
One urban development people seem genuinely enthused about is the new fountains and lights around the Independence Monument. Last Sunday saw a traffic jam of onlookers checking it out.
(Beats the lurid purple floodlamps briefly trained on the building a few years back.)
Tags:cambodia,khmer,urbanization
Yo I saw this EPIC ox cart on 51 yesterday! Selling pots, like you say! I’m glad they stuck around for me to see them, although I could see them getting banned in the near future.