“A City With No Smoke and No Sound” - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 164

a housing project. Today, where a vibrant community once lived, all there is to “develop-
ment” is a few volleyball courts and a fashion boutique.
As Phnom Penh continues to grow, the lack of planning threatens to unleash urban
chaos. The city has experienced spiraling land prices, worsening traffic, and flooding due
to improper drainage. When the monsoon comes, a third of the city is inundated. In 2009
the northern district of Russei Keo was frequently under water for weeks at a time. While
Phnom Penh has benefitted from a $350 million Japanese-funded flood mitigation pro-
ject, its gains have been undermined by the filling of lakes by property developers. Vann
Molyvann warned that the filling of Boeung Kak has eliminated one of the main rainwa-
ter catchments and will only exacerbate the monsoon flooding. “The whole district will
be flooded,” he said, pointing to a map of the lakeside. “It is very dangerous what they
are doing.”
The other scourge is traffic. As the Cambodian middle class has grown, cars have
emerged as an important indicator of status. Over the past five years, the number of cars
on the road has doubled. 32 Such status markers are especially important for government
officials, who often receive a freshly imported Lexus—the brand name printed in large
letters on the side—as a perk of their office. Public amenities such as roads and over-
passes, however, have barely kept pace with the boom in vehicle ownership. Oversized
cars are often parked on footpaths, or two- or three-deep into busy roads. Leafy back-
streets, crammed with parked four-wheel drives, have become bottlenecks.
Cambodia's social problems can be seen in microcosm on its roads. Like the country as
a whole, the country's road traffic operates less by the existing laws (which are ignored by
just about everybody) than by a loose convention: small gives way to large, or suffers the
consequences. As a result, Cambodians see little benefit in following road rules or mak-
ing allowances for other road users. Large 4WDs roar down narrow back streets, horns
blaring and headlights flashing. People drive drunk, or drive while texting. Frequently,
they drive on the wrong side of the road. A recent study by Handicap International-Bel-
gium found that less than a third of drivers even understand the concept of speed limits,
which don't exist in any case. 33 What laws do exist are enforced so selectively that they
might as well not exist. Traffic police, crouched behind parked cars on busy thorough-
fares, jump out to shake down unsuspecting motorists for bribes, whether or not they've
committed an offense, while vehicles with military and state license plates breeze past
unmolested.
When accidents happen, which is about as often as one would expect, the less wealthy
and “connected” party is invariably at fault. Very often the perpetrator simply leaves the
scene, or buys their way out of trouble. On the night of August 3, 2008, a middle-aged
crane operator named Sam Sabo was puttering along Sothearos Boulevard on his motor-
bike. Not far from the walls of the Royal Palace, he was run down by a black Cadillac Es-