Urban architecture in Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh has an urban landscape similar to many other SE Asian cities, with French influences, densely packed apartment buildings with shops on the ground floor, few sidewalks. On the other hand, it has a lot of unique character, with many modern buildings from the 60s in particular.
A group called Khmer Architecture Tours offers tours around Phnom Penh, which would be cool to do in every city! Unfortunately, they didn't offer any tours when we were there, so we printed out their walking map of central Phnom Penh and followed it.
I'd recommend spending half a day doing it - doing an architecture walking tour makes you look up at the buildings, rather than just looking downwards watching for puddles and other things you don't want to step in.
We ended the tour at the magnificent Art Deco Central Market, since the rest of the tour looked pretty similar to what we had seen, but more importantly it looked like it was going to rain and we were tired!
Beyond just the architecturally significant points on the walking tour, Phnom Penh's urban landscape is pretty fun to look at. Love all of the roof gardens!
The old airport structures are also good examples of 60s modernism, in a Khmer context.
I also loved these guard houses. Looks like someone folded up a sheet of concrete and plopped it by the entrance.
