Arriving at any city, at any place in the world, I try to get a feel of the local life by simply talking walks. While this may sound obvious, it’s not always that simple. Being a foreigner in a strange land, you’re not always sure whether it’s really possible to just simply walk around – whether it’s easy to find your way by foot, whether the local people will let you enjoy your walk, whether it’s clean enough and has sidewalks and most importantly – whether it’s safe to wonder about and where.
With Phnom Penh, I wasn’t sure what to think. But the city center seemed very compact, the ride from the airport smooth, the tourist touts not very aggressive, so I figured it’s worth a try. In the very little try that I spent in Phnom Penh, I actually wondered around quite a lot on 3 different times of the day : mid-day, very early morning and very late night.
People I shared these photos with told me I’m absolutely mad to wonder around like that by myself, but I felt surprisingly safe there. I might be just lucky, though.
Following are some photo captures of the walking tours I had around central Phnom Penh in no particular order.
Temples
Art gallery street
Kids playing (with foreigners) at the park
I’m not sure why, but this guy approached me as I was taking photos and with a threatening voice asked me "who are you working for? why are you taking photos of the kids?". After I assured him I’m a tourist just taking photos of random happy local kids and offered him to take a look at the photos, he calmed down and went back to the game. Strange.
Local street performances
Local Markets
Elephants walking the streets
Royal Palace
River
Riverside boardwalk
Sleepy homeless
Monks
Fishermen
Craftsmen families
Richshaw drivers
Morning exercise
You’d expect things to be dead empty, right? wrong. It was livelier than during mid-day, with groups of people doing morning exercise.
Liked it? found something interesting or surprising? let me know…
Looks like that guy is very protective of the kids and he assumed you were a predator. Cambodia is sadly a known destination for Western pedophiles and every decent White looking tourist can be mistaken for a bad guy. It’s rather sad how bad the reputation is of our race in some parts of Asia and how good in others…
Thanks for sharing the photos, they are very interesting.
MKL – yeah, you’re probably right. Just came back from the Philippines, it’s quite horrible the stereotype white males have over there. Rivals some of the places I dislike in dubious parts of Thailand.
Thanks, James. Looking forward to more of your comments.
I always wanted to go there. You have an interesting blog. I’ll have to check it out more often.