I never thought it would happen. I got up this morning like I do every other day (you know, put my pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else). And I hopped into the shower. Like most bathrooms here, there’s no separate unit for the shower area. No bathtub beneath it, no shower curtains, and no sliding glass panels. Instead, the shower consists of a showerhead placed along one of the walls of the bathroom (with a little heater unit tacked on the wall if you have hot water - we do). It’s very open and nice, except that it makes the bottom of your pants wet every time you walk into the bathroom for about three hours after you shower.
Anyway, our bathroom is even more open than most, because it is huge and because the false, lower ceiling that used to cover it was removed at some point, so the area above about 8 feet up the wall is open to the rest of the apartment and its airflow. As I was brushing my teeth after showering this morning, I suddenly felt something that I didn’t recognize. Finally, I placed my finger on it: a chill.
It seems that we’re plunging further into the cool, dry season this week, and for the first time, I actually felt a little chilly. Granted, it’s still probably about 80 degrees, but the sun didn’t feel quite as scorching early in the morning, and there’s a moderately cool breeze blowing pretty strongly. I walked out to do some errands before breakfast and felt like I could have almost been by the ocean in the early morning of summer at home. Anyway, I figured that this momentous, moderately cool weather was worth a blog purely because I’m not sweating right now.
I continued on this morning and discovered another new neighborhood right near our house. The four main North-South boulevards in town from the riverfront going West are Sisowath Quay, Sothearos Blvd., Norodom Blvd., and Monivong Blvd. All are main thoroughfares, but they each have their own distinct characteristics. Sisowath and Sothearos tend to be waterfront-oriented and bustling with people, shops, restaurants, and clustered, low-rise buildings. These are the streets lined by the riverfront park, the Royal Palace, and many other city landmarks. Norodom always seemed the stateliest to me, with its tree-lined sidewalks and current and former embassies lining parts of the road in the middle. At the top, it then opens up into the parks and temples of Wat Phnom. Finally, Monivong is the market street, set between both Psat Thmai and Psat Urusai, two of the big markets in town. It’s the street with the flashing signs at night and the newer, perhaps more generic, development. At the same time, it has a lot of life (and a lot of traffic) and is the best place to pick up essentials and cheap food.
We live one block East of Norodom, and it’s hard to miss the huge picturesque school that sits along Norodom on the opposite side from us. It takes up about two square blocks, and its ochre, nineteenth century school buildings set among grassy lawns and courtyards make it look like it could be straight from Mediterranean Europe. The fact that the whole complex is so big also makes it even more impressive and contrasts with the often piecemeal architectural wonders that you find elsewhere in town. I’ve been meaning to photograph it for some time, but unlike so many other things, it actually doesn’t seem like it’ll be altered within the next few weeks, so I’ve held off as I’ve prioritized other areas and sites that seem to be changing rapidly.
Anyway, I was walking down our street West over towards Monivong to find out about an upcoming film festival at the Center Bophana this morning and was enjoying this newly fresh air. I had read in some literature about old Phnom Penh that this area in the 100’s streets off of Monivong was one of the most desirable and elegant neighborhoods in Phnom Penh. In “Stay Alive, My Son,” the author talks about his middle-class upbringing in a beautiful area along Monivong. But I had always wondered how I could be so misremembering these descriptions, as the view from Monivong certainly doesn’t lend itself to elegant prose.
Granted I could have been biased by the nice weather, the early morning light, and the fact that I splurged for an omelet breakfast along the way at a café set in an older building across from the school, but I suddenly found a new, wonderful area of the city. The school is ever present and attractive as background, while the students from it and a cluster of schools that have also crept up around it keep the streets busy and playful. As a result, a number of small street carts and shops also thrive in the surrounding blocks.
Elsewhere, Phnom Penh usually seems to be a combination of grand, overly big boulevards or small streets that probably wouldn’t seem so small if the nearby buildings didn’t spill out into them and if residents, shops, and motorbikes didn’t minimize the width of the roads. Yet here, the buildings, the roads, and the amount of activity seemed perfectly proportioned. The shade to sun ratio seemed perfect, and even the balconies on the houses and apartments seemed bigger than in most other areas. The buildings are the right scale to the trees, and there is a greater concentration of colonial architecture in this area than I have seen anywhere else in the city. It’s mystique is exaggerated by the fact that many of the old buildings are being reused in different forms, so real looking is required to see the second floor balcony and ornamented roof sticking up above the later-built concrete shop below. Additionally, this area is anchored on the Monivong side by the Center Bophana and the French Cultural Center, both of which are two of the main cultural centers in town that show films, archive historical records, and generally promote both Cambodian and French-Cambodian culture.
We’ll see how long the cool weather lasts.