Phnom Penh Cambodia, phnom cambodia sihanoukkville, siem rep

Dinner was at the Foreign Correspondents Club on the river. Yellow walls were covered in geckos as feral cats ran underfoot feasting on scraps or the unlucky lizard. We over indulged on Crab Cakes, veggie spring rolls and Nachos. Here we met an artist from Santa Barbara that was on a six-month trip through Asia & India. Robert & he discussed various artists and soon discovered that they had a common link. Twenty-five years ago he had sold one of his first works to Robert's cousin in Los Angeles, which proved that it really is a small world

Phnom Cambodia or Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia. Phnom Penh is the type of city that most would avoid if they followed what they read in the books and newspapers. No longer the wild cowboy city while the United Nations controlled it (read Carole Livingston's Gecko Tails) but still with a touch of edginess. The Khmer Rouge killed 3 million only 25 years ago and yet those we met were friendly and without bitterness. Chianti was our helpful guide and he took us to the Silver Pagoda (each floor tile was silver), the Royal Palace and the Russian Market (Psar Tuol Tom Pong).

Chianti had told us how his parents moved to a different village were it wasn't known what their profession was. Like many others that escaped, his father said that he was a 'cyclo' driver. This way they were able to escape Pol Pot's plan to return Cambodia to Year Zero. This was the Khmer Rouge plan to transform Cambodia to an agrarian society by eliminating all those with education through the 'killing fields'.

PHNOM CAMBODIA

Phnom Penh today

Story About Phnom penh Capital city

People have inhabited parts of Southeast Asia including Cambodia since the early Stone Age, but the first firm evidence of settlements in the Phnom Penh area does not appear until about 2000 years ago. Though probably an active settlement in the Angkorian era (9th-15th century AD,) Phnom Penh doesn’t enter the historical record until after the Khmer capital had been moved to the area in the mid 15th century AD. At the time it was known as Chaktomuk - the 'Four Faces' - so called for its location at the four-branched confluence of the Mekong River, a riverine crossroads in the heart of Cambodia with the Tonle Sap River running west to the old Angkorian capital, the Mekong River north to Laos and branches south to the delta and the South China Sea. Phnom Penh is, before all else, the city at Chaktomuk on the Mekong. The earliest record of the name 'Phnom Penh' comes in the legend of Lady Penh and the origin of the city.

Legend
First recorded a century after it is claimed to have taken place, the legend of the founding of Phnom Penh [....] Read More