Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
SAFETY IN PHNOM PENH
While Phnom Penh is no longer the Wild West town it once was,
robberies
are not unknown,
and there have been instances of bags being snatched from tourists walking around key
tourist areas including the riverfront and Central Market. Moto passengers, too, are increasingly
becoming the target of bag-snatchers, so you should also exercise a bit of caution when
taking
motos
at night. It's certainly not worth being paranoid, but taking a tuk-tuk at night
may be safer (although bags have been known to be snatched from tuk-tuks too); keep your
bag well out of sight of passing motorbikes.
Phnom Penh's access to the sea. The eighteenth century was a period of
dynastic
squabbles
between pro-Thai and pro-Vietnamese factions of the royal family, and in
1770, Phnom Penh was actually burnt down by the Siamese, who proceeded to install
a new king and take control of the country.
As the nineteenth century dawned, the Vietnamese assumed suzerainty over
Cambodia. In 1812 Phnom Penh became the capital once again, though the court
retreated to Oudong twice over the next fifty years amid continuing power-struggles
between the Thais and Vietnamese.
Phnom Penh under the French
In 1863, King Norodom (great-great-grandfather of the current king, Norodom
Sihamoni), fearful of another Vietnamese invasion, signed a treaty for Cambodia to
become a
French protectorate
. At the behest of the French, he uprooted the court from
Oudong and the role of capital returned decisively to Phnom Penh, a place which the
recently arrived French described as “an unsophisticated settlement made up of a string
of thatched huts clustered along a single muddy track, the riverbanks crowded with the
houseboats of fisher-folk”. In fact, an estimate of its population at the time put it at
around 25,000. Despite Phnom Penh regaining its access to the sea (the Mekong delta
was now under French control) it remained very much an outpost, with the French far
more concerned with the development of Saigon.
In 1889, a new Senior Resident,
Hyun de Verneville
, was appointed to the
protectorate. Wanting to make Phnom Penh a place fit to be the French administrative
centre in Cambodia, he created a chic colonial town. By 1900, roads had been laid out
on a grid plan, a law court, public works and telegraph o
ces set up, and banks and
schools built. A
French quarter
grew up in the area north of Wat Phnom, where
imposing villas were built for the city's French administrators and traders; Wat Phnom
itself gained landscaped gardens and a zoo.
Towards independence
In the 1920s and 1930s, Phnom Penh grew prosperous. he road network was
extended, facilitated by the infilling of drainage canals; the Mekong was dredged,
making the city accessible to seagoing vessels; parks were created and communications
improved. In 1932, the city's
train station
was built and the railway line linking the
capital to Battambang was completed. Foreign travellers were lured to Cambodia by
exotic tales of hidden cities in the jungle.
The country's first
secondary school
, Lycée Sisowath, opened in Phnom Penh in 1936,
and slowly an educated elite developed, laying the foundations for later political
changes. During
World War II
, the occupying Japanese allowed the French to continue
running things and their impact on the city was relatively benign; in October 1941,
after the Japanese had arrived, the coronation of Norodom Sihanouk went ahead pretty
much as normal in Phnom Penh.
With
independence
from the French in 1954, Phnom Penh at last became a true seat
of government and an educated middle class began to gain prominence; café society
began to blossom, cinemas and theatres thrived, and motorbikes and cars took to the
