Cambodians Put Misery Aside, Savor Life

Life is not all misery in Cambodia.

On a lazy Sunday the war seems far away as Phnom Penh residents picnic by a river, take their children to the Royal Palace or stroll along a palm-lined esplanade.

In the morning, jam-packed jalopies and motorcycles balancing two or three passengers tear down the road to Koki, a wooded glade 10 miles out of town where meadows slope down to the banks of the Mekong River.

Stalls sell barbecued chicken and grilled fish on sticks, sugar cane, durian and other fruits. Open-air bars offer European beer, imported via Singapore, while sound systems blare out Khmer songs set to a disco beat.

Families sit lunching under thatched shelters built on stilts over the river. You can float in the coffee-colored water in a rubber tire or take a ride in a sampan poled by an Asian gondolier wearing a trilby and dirty shorts.

At makeshift outdoor casinos, gamblers lay bets on numbered boards. The barker, shouting a running commentary into a microphone, spins a wheel fixed to the back wall and a customer hurls a dart hoping to spear the winning number.

Some of the picnickers are overseas Khmers who have met success in the United States or Europe and are back visiting their families.

Others are from the middle class that has sprung up since the nation’s pragmatic young prime minister, Hun Sen, loosened the economy from its communist controls two years ago.

“We weren’t allowed to come here in Pol Pot’s time,” said one man, referring to the 1975-79 rule of the radical Khmer Rouge, when the capital was evacuated and its citizens made to work in labor camps.

Back in the city, a volleyball game is under way in the courtyard of the French Embassy, where foreign residents sought refuge when the Khmer Rouge took over the city. It since has been abandoned by Paris.

People crowd into the Royal Palace--the entry fee is 900 riels (about $2) for foreigners, 10 riels for Cambodians.

Crippled war veterans, their legs blown off by land mines, sit begging at the gate as a blind beggar scrapes a dirge on a Chinese violin.

The palace was built by French colonial rulers on old Khmer style at the turn of the century, the roofs of its buildings curved upwards at the corners and covered in gilt.

A European-style house built by Napoleon III for his queen and later shipped to Cambodia as a gift for King Norodom stands incongruously in one corner.

The throne room is the main attraction, although many of its treasures were carted off by the Khmer Rouge.

The bedroom used by former monarch Norodom Sihanouk--now in exile and the most prominent spokesman for the guerrilla coalition fighting Phnom Penh--can be seen complete with the air-conditioner he had installed.

Special permission is needed to visit the Silver Pagoda. Its floor is lined with six tons of silver and its centerpiece is a diamond-studded Buddha made of almost 200 pounds of gold.

Restoration work is due to be completed soon and it will be opened to all, a guide said.

Across a square outside the palace, where the king’s subjects once gathered to hear royal speeches, people stroll along the esplanade overlooking the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers.

Street photographers snap pictures of couples posing by bronze lions and the old guns that fired salutes when the royal barge used to arrive.

On a patch of waste ground, a crowd watches a troupe of acrobats and comedians whose star player is a dwarf. Hawkers sell coconut juice and dried fish.

Soldiers lounge in hammocks slung between trees, waiting for the 9 p.m. curfew to begin.

As night falls, a throng gathers outside Phnom Penh’s newest attraction--the Hotel Cambodiana, the first modern luxury hotel to be built in two decades.

While drivers and dance girls are waiting for customers, others are there simply to gawk at the lights and elaborate central tower of the gleaming edifice.