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Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh Information

Phnom Penh is often overlooked by visitors to Cambodia, directly on the temples of Angkor in Siem Reap. But this city has a certain charm with its colonial buildings, wide boulevards, pagodas and walks on the riverbank.

Those who have time to visit Phnom Penh, you will find a vibrant city, with a new confidence emerging from troubled times. A large part of the city was badly damaged and its treasures in the river in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge, and if the citizens back in 1979 they found just shells of buildings in which to live.

Decades later the life of the city has improved, and there is optimism in the air, with the expatriate community and visitors, employment opportunities for many.

Phnom Penh was in the 14th Century but did not become the capital until 1866, when Cambodia was a French protectorate. The 20th Century was a difficult issue for the city and country: It was designed by the Japanese during the Second World War, then on the side of the North Vietnamese against the Americans, what they fall bombs on Cambodia and to a flood of refugees into the city.

Dissatisfied left fighters, known as the Khmer Rouge, which is in a civil war with the right-wing government culminating in them emptying Phnom Penh of the residents in April 1975 and return the country to Year Zero, with great brutality.

The invasion by the Vietnamese in 1979 began the very slow recovery of the city and country, and it endured political turmoil until UN-backed elections in 1993 and the coronation of King Sihanouk in the same year.

Since the late 1990s, when the Khmer Rouge were totally disempowered, political life has been down to a certain extent and 2004 saw a new king, Sihamoni, in the royal palace after the abdication of his father. The city is now dynamic and evolving all the time, with stylish restaurants, bars, shops and hotels opened, and there is a new found confidence in the future.