“A City With No Smoke and No Sound” - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 155

With economic liberalization came a boom in urban development and construction.
Today Phnom Penh is a city in the midst of constant change and regeneration: buildings
rise and fall, sped by a combination of lax planning codes and cheap construction labor.
First-time visitors to the city are often surprised to encounter air-conditioned super-
markets, 24-hour convenience stores, and designer clothing boutiques. On Monivong
Boulevard well-dressed young Cambodians speed along on scooters, weaving in and
out of the slower vehicles. They scoot pass 1960s'-era apartment blocks, now faded to
a sepulchral gray, which are slowly making way for new buildings of glass and steel.
Farther along, at outdoor Chinese restaurants, diners sit on plastic chairs under neon signs
where animated fish flip and neon crabs snap their claws.
To the south and east lies the symbolic center of the city—the Royal Palace, situated at
the point where the “four arms” of the Mekong, Tonlé Sap, and Tonlé Bassac converge.
Each night the square in front of the palace fills up with snack vendors and fortune tellers.
Others sit with small cages full of birds, which for a fee can be set free to earn spiritu-
al merit. Farther along Sisowath Quay, the riverfront promenade, Cambodia's booming
tourist and expat scene declares itself in a string of sidewalk bars and restaurants, offer-
ing cold beer, cheap massages, and a wide range of cuisines. After witnessing the horrors
of the “Killing Fields” or S-21 prison, with its rows and rows of mute black-and-white
interrogation portraits, it can be hard to discern signs of Phnom Penh's traumatic past in
its bustling present. The city fizzes with life.
Nowhere is the changing face of Phnom Penh more apparent than on Koh Pich. Dia-
mond Island, as it is called in English, made international headlines in November 2010,
when a stampede on a narrow bridge during that year's Water Festival left 353 people
dead. 8 In the years since, the small lemon-shaped island, sitting at the point where the
Mekong and Bassac Rivers converge, has become a window into Phnom Penh's future.
Ten years ago there was nothing here but farmland, where around 300 families quietly
grew eggplants and other vegetables to sell in the city's markets. In March 2004 the Over-
seas Cambodia Investment Corporation (OCIC), a firm controlled by Canadia Bank with
links to Hun Sen's family, announced plans to clear the island, reinforce its banks, and
create “Diamond Island City”—a Western-style entertainment and housing complex. The
farmers were offered small compensation payments and moved on.
OCIC's vision was a paradise for the wealthy: ordered, paved over, ringed by wide
smooth roads—a monument to a new mode of Cambodian middle-class living. Today
Diamond Island boasts a driving range (the “Elite Golf Club”), a water park, wedding
reception halls, and luxury condominiums. Future plans include a gem-shaped observa-
tion tower and a forest of high-rise apartments. La Seine, a luxury housing development,
features a fake French colonial clocktower, and developers have laid out parks dotted
with scrawny saplings and classical statuary. The pièce de résistance, unveiled in March