cambopedia

Love Cambodia

On a trip to Phnom Penh from Bangkok, a traveler at ‘flashbacks, time after time’ puts some thoughts on the visit to The Place, the Russian Market, a North Korean restaurant, the Grand Palace, the Silver Pagoda, and the Killing Fields.

Also, there’s an interesting thing about a new North Korean restaurant in the Cambodian capital opened soon after Pyongyang, an oldest and only North Korean Restaurant, was closed recently.

Love Cambodia. We had lunch at a restaurant, a Korean restaurant, to be more specific a North Korean restaurant. Yep. There were actually a lot of those in Phnom Penh. Word on the street is, the waitresses in their hamboks, moved down to Cambodia to serve North Korean food… and they aren’t allowed to leave the restaurant. They live upstairs and can’t go outside. What a life. I asked one of the waitresses a couple questions in Korean. She basically felt sorry for me, because my family was from South Korea and that she missed Pyongyang a lot.

Phnom Penh's Central Market gets new look

Some more pictures of renovated Central Market (Phsar Thmey) can be found here. Early, Cambopedia also linked to a blog post of French-styled architecture built in the Cambodian capital.

Lady Penh: review

Don’t know what to do in Phnom Penh? Ask Lady Penh!
If you’re interested in what you might want to do in Phnom Penh, a dedicated site Lady Penh is the right one for you. It’s for both expatriates and visitors who want to make the most out of the day attending cultural related events in Phnom Penh. The name of the site, Lady Penh, implies the name of the legendary founder, Daun (Grandma) Penh, of the capital city.

You can find new updates of some of the most interesting events happening in town. Rather than just a one-stop of activity calendar for visitors and tourists, the site provides detail information about each event that you wouldn’t want to miss.

Lady Penh – this website – is all about events in Phnom Penh. We are a bunch of fellow PhnomPenhers with the feeling that our city is somewhat at crossroads: it’s getting kind of tough to keep track of what’s going on here – which had not been too hard until 2009 (to say the least). Phnom Penh is awakening… And this website is our participation to this process.

A nice feature of the site is its printable weekly version, which can be found here. In addition to this, if you’re a Facebooker, you can easily get connected with Lady Penh via Facebook Group page.

Web address: http://ladypenh.com/

Koreans living in Cambodia

According to Cambodia’s Mirror, it’s estimated that there are about 4,000 Koreans living in Cambodia. Not surprisingly, South Korea becomes one of the largest foreign investors in the Kingdom after China.

In a recent blog post (Observations and Reflection from Korea – Sunday, 1.11.2009) by Norbert Klein, a long-time expatriate, the Cambodian capital is about to lose its Boeng Kak Lake, largely to contributed to the city development.

And there are not only technicality related disruptions. I took the following picture of the Boeng Kak Lake in Phnom Penh some years ago, leaving for Bangkok. Many big cities around the world maintain their lakes or rivers, or even create artificial ones. The Phnom Penh administration is destroying what there is – filling about 90 % of the lake with sand for higher level business, also displacing about 4,000 families.

French-influenced architecture: cityscape

Cambodian photoblogger ‘tumnei’ recently posted two photos of a French-erected building, taken in Phnom Penh. The first picture distinguishes itself from the second one only that the building gets renovated as part of a larger program, mostly financed by the French government. Another bigger project is taking place at the Central Market, also known as Phsar Thmey.

Water Festival in Cambodia

The Cambodian capital city Phnom Penh is set to host one of its largest annual events, Water Festival. Boat rowing contest will attract some ten thousand Cambodians from across the country to enjoy the festivity. Phnom Penh, as usual, will be crowded by throng of people. Meanwhile, it’s also the time for the city residents to take their holiday break, and make trip away or out of town. In Khmer language, it’s known as Bon Om Touk.

One of the most traditional parts of this national event/holiday is the country’s most consumed meal, namely rice. Made of special rice, Ambok is mixed with banana and coconut. Firstly, the rice is fried in the husk and then pounded with a giant pestle.

National Genocide Center: Phnom Penh

‘National Genocide Center’ is probably a newly-coined term to describe Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum by travelers Matt and Debz. It’s also widely known as Security Prison 21 (S-21).

Our first full day in Phnom Penh gave us a chance to venture out in a Tuk Tuk to the infamous “Killing fields” or “National Genocide Center”. I’m not sure which sounds less inviting but it was a worthwhile visit to get more educated on an era of unimaginable horror for hundreds of thousands of Khmer.