Phnom Penh Street Scenes

These are a few street scenes from my trip to Phnom Penh earlier in the year. Above is the old Post Office building, from which our architectural tour of the city departed. The tour was more like a history of the city and country as witnessed through the building practices. The Post Office is a decent example of the French colonialist style.
This café front shows more French influence. Notice the bricked-over window above the entrance; many buildings were "reclaimed" by residents after the Khmer Rouge years. Property records were scarce or destroyed and due to the years of emptied cities and forced labor, many people just took what space they could.

Here above is a newly built night club building.
In the picture above, the conflicting roof angles and balconies come as a result of people making residential space out of a former Chinese temple.
This is the main library, with plaques in French and Cambodian which is currently being restored. During the Khmer Rouge Years I believe it functioned as a kitchen for the Khmer Rouge...

Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Angkor Thom is part of the Angkor Wat complex of temples situated in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia. While most of the temples remain just singular temples, at Angkor Thom I got more of a sense of these structures once being part of one of the largest population centers on Earth (at the time). At it's largest, somewhere around 1000 AD, the area is estimated to have been home to almost one million inhabitants. This was at a time when London had a population of 55,000. Most of what remains is only temples and royal or religious buildings, mainly because these were the only buildings allowed to be made out of stone. In this tropical and incredibly wet climate, it's easy to understand why not many wooden structures remain.
After passing the Bayon temple (see the previous blog entry) the following structure is the Terrace of Elephants. This is both an outer wall encircling a temple, and a "review stand" where royals or government officials could observe what ever was passing.
Here above is the long view of the Terrace of Elephants.
This above is the view while standing on the Terrace of Elephants.

This is a gate to one of the temples behind the Terrace of Elephants.

The temple behind the Terrace of Elephants.


Here is one of several reflecting pools.

And finally, another gate complex towards the end of the Terrace of Elephants.