LTO Cambodia: The way things are done

Friday, April 8, 2011

The way things are done

Riverfront pavement cleared of restaurant tables and chairs

Today the police made the rounds on the Phnom Penh riverfront, once again ordering restaurants and bars to pull their sidewalk seating back inside. This has been an on-going battle between the police and the riverfront cafés for several years. It's never made much sense to me. The riverfront is perhaps the most popular tourist area in the city. Many tourists and other diners prefer the sidewalk seating to being trapped indoors - to enjoy the view of the riverfront scene, the sights, the sun, the air, Sambo the elephant walking by. Presumably this clearing is done to keep the path open for pedestrians, though for years the restaurants have been particularly careful to leave at least half the sidewalk clear for passers-by. I walk the riverfront everyday and though there are plenty of obstacles I have never had my path encumbered by sidewalk seating.

That aside, the police have cleared the riverfront sidewalk of all restaurant tables and chairs. Where yesterday there were happy tourists swigging mugs of cold Angkor beer, there is now enough space for a two-lane tuk-tuk highway. And what was left after they cleared the riverfront of this offending tourist draw?

Motorcycle parking...

Luxury vehicles and tuk-tuks blocking the crosswalks...

Child beggars/vendors and more tuk-tuks blocking the crosswalks...

Luxury car parking...

Vans loading coffins...

More motorcycles and scaffolding...

Racks of clothes...

...and plenty of room to park your car.

But to be sure, there was no sidewalk seating on the pavement. Nor were there any tourists sitting in that non-existent seating spending their tourist dollars. If nothing else, the police accomplished that much. As for the luxury vehicles on the sidewalk, the motorcycles and cars, the exploited children, the tuk-tuks blocking the crosswalks and so on, well, the authorities have their priorities.

3 comments:

UnknownApril 8, 2011 at 12:57 AM
I had this all explained to me once and now I more or less forget what I was told. I think I remember a Khmer friend explaining that his business owned the third of the footpath nearest the wall and the sangkat owned the rest. This was what entitled him to park his motorbike there. There's also the thing with putting a line of potplants down from your shop-boundary to the curb to mark off your footpath space. All in all, it's quite a different attitude to the one we know in the West.

As for the anti-table drive, I don't know, but I suspect it's to do with the sense of national shame that Phnom Penh doesn't look like Bangkok. The city authorities want a nice civilised riverfront like in Bangkok. You'll notice that the anti-table drive doesn't apply anywhere else in town. Casey, could you please look into this further, I'd really like to know what's behind it.
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Casey Nelson (pseud.)April 8, 2011 at 1:22 AM
I believe that is called or is a variation on the "five foot way" rule, whereby in the construction of colonial era 'Chinese shophouse' style buildings, the ground floor was extended by means of an awning, under which the householder was able to control that pavement space for purposes of his business. Though the 'five foot way' rule was tradition, I don't know if it has made its way in any formal sense into modern Cambodian law.
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AnonymousApril 9, 2011 at 1:47 AM
Just make sure you have cop friends who are able to warn you about this crap in time to save some of your investment then deal with it until the heat lets up. dealt with this shit for years and nothing ever changes. Side streets, mini marts etc. exempt.
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Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.