History

Those who find Phnom Penh's current state lacking should recall the terrible times the city has been through in recent decades. In 1975 it was choked with up to 2 million refugees from the war between the then U.S.-backed government and the Khmer Rouge. Following the fall to the Khmer Rouge, it was completely emptied of civilians and allowed to crumble for the next four years. Most of the small class of skilled professionals were murdered or driven into exile. The city fell to the Vietnamese Army in 1979. The new Cambodian government had no money to spend on urban improvement until the peace settlement of 1992.As Cambodia's economy has risen, a new rich class has arisen in Phnom Penh, and a crop of new hotels and restaurants has opened to accommodate them and the tourist trade. There is now a large gulf between the very rich and the very poor, largely due to the level of the nation's corruption. A trip to the green-domed Sorya Mall will transport you to the consumerist world to which the emerging middle and upper classes aspire.All of Phnom Penh's streets are numbered, although some major thoroughfares have names as well. The scheme is simple: odd-numbered streets run north-south, the numbers increasing as you head west from the river, and even numbers run west-east, increasing as you head south (with some exceptions, e.g. the west side of the Boeung Kak lake). House numbers, however, are quite haphazard. Don't expect houses to be numbered sequentially in a street; you might even find two completely unrelated houses with the same number in the same street. ...... more itinerary